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The True Daniel Webster 



THE "TRUE" BIOGRAPHIES 
AND HISTORIES 



THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN 

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

With numerous illustrations. Crown 8vo. 
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THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON 

BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD 

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THE TRUE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

BY SYD.VEY GEORGE FISHER 

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THE TRUE THOMAS JEFFERSON 

BY WILLIAM ELERQY CURTIS 

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THE TRUE ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

BY WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS 

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THE TRUE HENRY CLAY 

BY JOSEPH M. ROGERS 

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THE TRUE ANDREW JACKSON 

BY CYRUS T. BRADY 

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THE TRUE PATRICK HENRY 

BY GEORGE MORGAN 

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THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION 

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

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half levant, $5.00, yiet 

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR 

BY GUY CARLETON LEE, PH.D. 

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$2.00, net; half levant, Ss.oo. «e' 



i 




DANIEL WEBSTER 
The Statue by Ball at Dartmouth College 



The True 
Daniel ¥/ebster 

By 

Sydney George Fisher,' Litt. D., LL.D. 

Author of 

** The True Benjamin Franklin," " The Struggle for American Independence," 

*' Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times," 

" The Making of Pennsylvania," etc. 



My manner of political life is known to you all. * * * 1 leave it to my country 
and to the world, whether it will or will not stand the test of 
time and truth." — Sfetch of' Jul^ g, jSj2. 



WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS 




Philadelphia & London 

J. B. Lippincott C>)TTipar>y 
1911 



£'$4-0 



COPYRIGHT, I9H, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



PUBLISHBO NOVEMBER, igll 



PRINTED dY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 

FUILADBLPHIA, U.S.A. 



©CI.A3n505l" 



Preface 

The material for a life of Webster is largely con- 
tained in his speeches and letters. For nearly two 
generations after his death the principal collection of 
these was an edition of his speeches in six volumes, 
published in 1851, edited by his lifelong friend, fellow- 
orator and pupil, Edward Everett, and two volumes 
of his letters edited by his son Fletcher Webster. These 
contained by no means all his writings, most of which 
in their original manuscript form have been concentrated 
in the New Hampshire Historical Society, at Concord, 
which is the richest collection of them, and the Sanborn 
collection in New York. The Greenough collection at 
Washington consists principally of letters from Web- 
ster's correspondents. There are, of course, nmnerous 
letters still owned by individuals, and, unfortunately, 
large numbers of probably valuable letters, like those 
to his daughter Julia and to his English correspondents, 
have been lost or destroyed. 

In 1902 Mr. C. H. Van Tyne edited a large volume 
of most interesting letters from these various sources 
arranged so as to reveal Webster as the politician, 
statesman, farmer, sportsman, and in other phases of his 
life. In the following year the same publishers who 
had brought out the six-volume edition of his speeches 
in 185 1 issued the National Edition of all his writings, 
both letters and speeches, in eighteen volumes. This 
edition, an admirable piece of book making, contains even 
his boyish compositions ; and while not including lit- 
erally everything, has thrown an immense additional 
light upon his life and opinions. The mass of his 
writings now accessible in these editions. Van Tyne's 
and the National, give one an impression of intellectual 



PREFACE 

power which, I think, would be hard to match any- 
where in the history of law and politics. Many of 
the speeches and addresses omitted from the early 
edition of 1851 because they seemed' offhand or in un- 
dress uniform, are for that reason the more valuable 
and show phases of his reasoning power and mastery 
of language which are not so apparent in more formal 
productions. 

The " Private Life of Daniel Webster," written by 
Mr. Lanman, who was his private secretary towards 
the close of his life, Marsh's " Reminiscences," Lyman's 
" Memorials," Harvey's " Reminiscences," and Plumer's 
" Reminiscences "^ are the principal sourcesof our knowl- 
edge of Webster's personality, outside of his letters. 
There is also information on this point in the volume 
of addresses delivered at the Webster Centennial at 
Dartmouth in 1901. The portraiture has been de- 
scribed by Mr. Charles Henry Hart in his usual thorough 
manner in McClure's Magazine for May, 1897. There 
were an immense number of portraits, daguerreotypes, 
engravings and prints of Webster. Harding is said to 
have painted him from life nine times. 

The " Life of Webster," in two large volumes of six 
hundred pages each, by his literary executor, Mr. George 
Ticknor Curtis, contains also personal, reminiscences 
because Mr. Curtis was one of his intimate friends. 
But these two large volumes are more particularly, 
as they were intended to be, a store house of letters and 
documents, as well as of facts and dates; in short, an 
official source of information. 

From Webster's relentless enemies, the Abolitionists 
and Free Soilers, much information of a certain kind 
is to be obtained ; and though my respect for the meth- 
ods and arguments of these people is not of the highest, 
I have admitted them as contemporaries and witnesses, 

' Plumer's " Reminiscences " are; printed in the National 
Edition of Webster's " Works," vol. xvii, p. 546. 

vi 



PREFACE 

and the reader may judge for himself of the value 
of their testimony. 

The recent essay, " Daniel Webster — a Vindication," 
by Mr. W. C. Wilkinson, contains original evidence of 
the greatest value collected from the contemporaries, 
both friends and enemies, of Webster ; and it is im- 
portant in connection with those extraordinary tales 
of Webster's supposed excessive drunkenness and im- 
morality, defects which appear to have increased since 
his death, to such a degree that the Abolitionists who 
started the scandals would now, if alive, hardly be 
able to recognize their own work. 

The Free Soilers had another chance at their old 
enemy in 1882, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, 
and one or more of the Boston newspapers gave them 
space to declaim. Senator Lodge's " Life of Webster," 
published in 1883, seems to have been written under 
the influence of this outburst; and he says that the 
Abolitionist view of Webster is the one that has been 
finally adopted by history, and dissent from it will be 
unavailing. 

The Senator's book is, of course, ably written and 
argued, and as its author lived in Boston in the midst 
of people who had known Webster and all his con- 
troversies, the book is in some degree a source of 
original material. It is certainly typical of the Aboli- 
tionist and Free Soil point of view. In that respect 
I think it goes a little too far; and as it has seriously 
attacked the credibility of Mr. Peter Harvey's " Rem- 
iniscences," I shall have to say something in defence 
of that gentleman, to whose care we owe the preser- 
vation of such a large number of the Webster papers 
now collected in the New Hampshire Historical Society. 

Mr. Lodge rules out Harvey as a witness, and 
says " a more untrustworthy book it would be impossible 
to imagine. There is not a statement in it which can 
be safely accepted, unless supported by other evidence." 
He gives only two reasons. One, a story Harvey 

vii 



PREFACE 

tells that when Webster was a comparatively young 
man, William Pinkney, then the leader of the Ameri- 
can Bar, persistently snubbed him, and attempted to 
put him in a contemptible position before the Supreme 
Court at Washington. Webster finally invited him into 
one of the Grand Jury rooms, locked the door, told 
him he must apologize then and also in the presence 
of the Supreme Court next day, or take the con- 
sequence; and Pinkney apologized then and the next 
day. This story, Mr. Lodge says, " is either wholly 
fictitious or so grossly exaggerated as to be practically 
false," and puts Webster " in the light of a common 
and odious bully," The other reason is, that Harvey 
" makes Webster say that he never received a challenge 
from Randolph, whereas in Webster's own letter pub- 
lished by Mr. Curtis, there is express reference to a 
note of challenge received from Randolph." 

In regard to the challenge Harvey was apparently 
mistaken, but possibly not in the way that Mr. Lodge 
supposes ; and the history of the matter is somewhat 
curious. In the controversy with Randolph in 1816 we 
have, as Mr. Lodge says, a letter from Webster, refer- 
ring to a challenge received from Randolph and indeed 
declining the challenge. But there was afterwards, in 
1824 and i82'5, another controversy, in which Randolph 
had written a letter in a Richmond newspaper attacking 
the conduct of a committee of Congress appointed to 
investigate some conduct of the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury. Webster was a member of this Committee and 
with his fellow-members was quite indignant at the 
attack, and, according to the account Randolph received, 
branded its statements as a lie. Afterwards in Con- 
gress, Webster denied the truth of Randolph's state- 
ments in strong but parliamentary language. 

It is probably this controversy to which Harvey 
refers, because he mentions Colonel Benton as sent to 
Webster by Randolph. 

viii 



PREFACE 

''One day I had been asking him some questions about his 
controversy with John Randolph. It was said, I told him, that 
John Randolph had challenged him. He replied that that was 
not true. 

" ' But,' said he, ' he sent Colonel Benton to me to know 
if I meant such and such things ; and I told him that I did 
not choose to be called to account for anything I had said, 
and that I meant just what I had said. It was evident that 
there was a purpose to have a row with me.' " (Harv^ey, 
"Reminiscences," p. 119.) 

The controversy was kept out of the newspapers by 
an agreement to that effect between Webster and Ran- 
dolph. As time passed, however, scraps of it leaked 
out, and this gossip no doubt had set Harvey inquiring. 
Not until 1880 were any papers or letters on the subject 
published, and then some appeared in the Magazine of 
American History for January, 1880, and afterwards 
in 1903 some of the same and other papers on the sub- 
ject appeared in the National Edition of Webster's 
Works of that year, taken from the collection in the 
New Hampshire Historical Society.- These papers in 
the National Edition were all that at first came to my 
knowledge in regard to the affair ; and according to these 
Benton came to Webster with a letter from Randolph, 
and Webster prepared a reply to this letter. Appa- 
rently, however, as the result of further conversation 
with Benton, Webster destroyed his reply, and in place 
of it gave Benton another letter and a memorandum, 
both to the effect that he was willing that Benton 
" should say to Mr. R. that he has no recollection of 
having said anything which can possibly be considered 
as affecting Mr. R.'s veracity beyond what he said in 
the H. of R. If he has used other expressions, they 
must have been about the same time ; he does not now 
recollect them and disclaims them." There was more 
to the same effect and an agreement or understanding 
that " no publication is called for and none is to be in 
any way authorized by either of us." 

^ " Works," National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 102. 

ix 



PREFACE 

Such is in brief the light which the pubhcation 
of the National Edition threw upon the affair. There is 
no mention of any challenge, unless a person might 
infer that the letter Webster received from Randolph 
must have been a challenge. These papers were appa- 
rently part of those given by Harvey, after Webster's 
death, to the New Hampshire Historical Society, and 
if Harvey examined them before giving them to the 
Society, he would probably have concluded that there 
was no challenge. Webster's literary executor, Mr. 
Curtis, if he knew of this controversy, seems to have 
thought that there was no challenge, because he de- 
scribes the difficulty of 1816 as " the sole instance in 
which a challenge was sent."^ 

While the present volume was in press, however, Mr. 
Charles Henry Hart, of Philadelphia, called my atten- 
tion to some Webster letters he gave to the Historical 
Society of Massachusetts in October, 1879, and fur- 
nished me with copies of them. The very first one is a 
letter of challenge from Randolph, dated February 20, 
1825, in these words: 

Sir: I learn from unquestionable authority, that during my 
late absence from the United States, you have indulged your- 
self in liberties with my name (aspersing my veracity) which 
no gentleman can take, who does not hold himself personally 
responsible for such insult. 

My friend. Col. Benton (the bearer of this note) will 
arrange the terms of the meeting to which you are hereby 
invited. 

I am. Sir, your obed. ServL, 

John Randolph of Roanoke. 
To Daniel Webster, Esq., 

of Massachusetts. 

This letter in Randolph's handwriting was bought 
wnth the others by Mr. Hart at a public sale ; and 
the collection as he bought it was headed by a letter 
of April I, 1854, from Commodore William Inman, say- 

^ Curtis, "Life of Webster," vol. i, p. 154. 

X 



PREFACE 

ing that the papers were given to him by Randolph on 
" our voyage to Russia in 1830." The other papers 
accompanying the letter are some of them the same, with 
slight verbal variations, as those published in the Na- 
tional Edition in 1903, and the rest add nothing of any 
great importance. It was these Hart papers that were 
published in the American Magadnc of History for 
January, 1880. But Commodore Inman did not address 
his letter or give the papers to Mr. Hart, as stated in 
the magazine. The Commodore's letter is believed to 
have been addressed to Mr. Charles D. Gardette, of 
Philadelphia. 

Apparently, then, the letter from Randolph, which the 
papers in the National Edition mention Webster as hav- 
ing returned to Benton without keeping a copy and the 
answer to which he destroyed, was a challenge. The 
proof is not absolute demonstration, but is certainly 
strong. What happened seems to have been that Benton 
arranged an amicable adjustment by which Webster said 
in writing that he disclaimed everything except what he 
had said in the House of Representatives, that he 
merely denied Randolph's accuracy of statement without 
going farther. Then it was agreed by Benton and Web- 
ster that the challenge should be wiped out and forgotten. 
Webster handed it to Benton, kept no copy, destroyed 
(burnt Benton says in the Hart papers) the letter he 
had prepared in answer to it, and agreed that he and 
Randolph should keep the whole thing out of the news- 
papers. The challenge was therefore in effect with- 
drawn by Randolph through Benton, his second. Ben- 
ton no doubt returned the original challenge letter to 
Randolph, who five years afterwards in crossing the 
ocean with Commodore Inman could not refrain from 
putting it in the way of ultimate publication by giving 
a copy of it in his own hand writing to the Commodore, 
together with other papers ; and also no doubt entertain- 
ing him with a spicy account of the affair from the 
Randolph point of view. 

xi 



PREFACE 

When Webster therefore was asked by Harvey if 
there had been any challenge, he answered as he would 
have answered a newspaper reporter, or any news gath- 
erer of the time, by saying no, there was none ; the 
same sort of answer Sir Walter Scott is said to have 
given when asked if he was the author of the Waverley 
novels ; and the same answer most people consider them- 
selves entitled to give when the gossips inquire about 
what is none of their business. Webster, Benton, and 
Randolph had agreed that the challenge should be 
wiped out, withdrawn, forgotten, nothing about it pub- 
lished. Benton and Webster kept their part of the 
agreement to the letter. Randolph, it seems, was a 
trifle careless in keeping his, although he endorsed on 
the papers given to Inman, an injunction not to let them 
be published. It was a poor way to keep a secret. But 
in the light of all these circumstances, can Harvey be 
blamed for any incorrectness in the account of the affair 
in his " Reminiscences " of Webster? 

We would, of course, like to know the contents of 
that letter of Webster's in reply to the challenge. But 
even Benton did not know the contents of it ; for he 
says in the Hart papers that Webster burnt it, without 
showing it to him or telling him anything it contained. 
Probably it was the same reply he gave to Randolph's 
challenge in 1816, a flat refusal, a denial of Randolph's 
right to call him to account in that way and a warning 
to him not to attempt any street ruffianism. 

But as to Harvey and his mistake, if you rule out 
entirely every witness who makes a single mistake, you 
will cut yourself down to very few. Lanman, Webster's 
private secretary, will have to go, because he tells the 
anecdote of Webster on his graduation day, tearing up 
his diploma on the campus at Dartmouth, saying, " My 
industry may make a man of me, but this parchment 
never will," and then mounting his horse and riding 
home in lofty magnificence. Where this tale originated, 
nobody seems to know. It has been positively denied 

xii 



PREFACE 

by Webster's associates and the people who knew him 
best at that time ; and so far as such things are capable 
of proof or disproof, it has been disproved. 

Harvey may have exaggerated the Pinkney anecdote. 
Mr. Lodge assumes that he did. Someone else may 
assume that he did not. At this late day who can tell? 

Why should we reject everything he says? Must 
we reject that interesting story of Monica, the slave 
whose freedom Webster purchased? Is that a fabri- 
cation and a fake ? Or that story that when Webster was 
asked if he had ever seen the junction of the Mississippi 
and the Missouri, he replied, " Yes ; but there is no 
junction. The Missouri seizes the Mississippi and car- 
ries her captive to New Orleans " ? And so of a score 
of other apparently valuable pieces of information. Is 
it not better to admit Mr. Peter Harvey as a witness, 
an eye witness, and let readers judge for themselves, 
from all the circumstances, how much of him they will 
believe ? 

He was, I find, a merchant and man of business in 
Boston, president of a bank, treasurer of the Rutland 
Railroad, a member of the Governor's Council, served 
in both branches of the Legislature, interested in politics, 
a devoted Whig, a great admirer and friend for many 
years of Webster, — a Boswell, if you like, — made politi- 
cal arrangements for Webster, stayed at his house in 
Washington and at Marshfield, was given by Webster's 
son, Fletcher, a large number of his father's letters and 
papers, added to this collection by his own efforts and 
gave it all to the New Hampshire Historical Society. 
He was in fact, from general ability and knowledge of 
the world, more competent to write intimately about 
Webster than any of the other reminiscence writers, 
except, perhaps, Plumer. But when I began my investi- 
gations, I found a most extraordinary hostility towards 
him among certain excellent people in Boston. " Oh, 
yes ; he was a nice old gentleman, always defending the 
Websters ; and heaven knows they needed it ; but don't 

xiii 



PREFACE 

pay attention to anything he says ; he is very vmreHable." 
Soon, however, I had the key. All these excellent 
people were of the old Abolitionist and Free Soil parties, 
or the sons or admirers of the old Free Soilers. Great 
and noble people they were in their day. I do not ques- 
tion that. But they had certain limitations. They, of 
course, could not endure Mr. Harvey because he was 
an ardent Whig, and in his " Reminiscences " there is 
more or less argument in support of Webster's seventh of 
March speech on the Compromise of 1850. That, of 
course, has damned him forever ; he will never be relia- 
ble in Boston ; never anything but a nice, weak-minded 
old gentleman, who was always defending the Websters. 
That key once obtained unlocks a great deal of Web- 
ster material. If you pick up a diary or letter or any- 
thing about Webster and know the politics of the writer, 
whether Free Soil or Whig, you can almost write out 
beforehand what he will say. That old controversy was 
a terrible one in its day ; and necessarily so ; for it was 
part of the Civil War. Webster was caught in it, and 
if he had succumbed unresisting to the current he might 
have been swept on without a sound and landed as a 
respectable corpse. But because he rose, lion-like, and 
fought and struggled with the rapids and the whirlpool, 
they tore and mangled him until it is an almost unrecog- 
nizable body that his biographer has to reanimate with 
its original souL 



Contents 



PAGE 

I. Origin AND Education 15 

II. Methods and Character of his Eloquence.. 53 

III. Early Professional Days and Relations 

with Judge Story 70 

IV. War of 1812 and the Hartford Convention 95 

V. Dartmouth College Case — Kenniston Trial 
— Constitutional Convention — Plymouth 
Oration 141 

VI. The Missouri Compromise — Greek Indepen- 
dence — Tariff of 1854 — Gibbons vs. Ogden 164 

VII. Field Sports — Discovery of Marshfield — 

Visit to Jefferson — Loss of his Son 187 

VIII. Bargain and Corruption — Crimes Act — En- 
glish Friends — Bunker Hill Address — 
Niagara — Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson 195 

IX. Election to the Senate — Death of his Wife 
— Tariff of 1828 — Remarriage — Presi- 
dent's Power of Removal 219 

X. The Great Debate — Reply to Hayne 233 

XI. The White Murder Trial — Jacksonian Poli- 
tics — Bank of the United States — Marsh- 
field 281 

XII. Nullification and Compromise 308 

XIII. The Removal of the Deposits — A Chance 

for the Presidency 340 

XIV. Attempts to Retire — Panic of 1837 — Sub- 

treasury — Visit to England — Hard Cider 
Campaign — Secretary of State 360' 

XV 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XV. The Northeast Boundary Dispute 393 

XVI. Retires from the Cabinet— Life at Marsh- 
field— Girard Will — Religion — The Presi- 
dency — The Ingersoll Charges — Pension 
AND Debts 411 

XVII. The Mexican War and Slavery 436 

XVIII. The Seventh of March Speech and its Con- 
sequences 459 

XIX. Last Days of Webster and the Whigs 495 

Index 513 



List of Illustrations 

PAGE 

The Ball Statue of Webster Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Mr. H. H. H. LangUl of the statue by 
Thomas Ball in the possession of Dartmouth College. Generally 
considered a fine representation of Webster's attitude and figure 
in middle age. The same sculptor made a statue of Webster in 
bronze which is in Central Park, New York. 

House in which Webster was Born 25 

From the sketch by Lanman, engraved in his " Private Life of 
Webster." Lanman says that Webster approved the sketch as 
correct. 

Webster Tavern at The Elms Farm 29 

From an old photograph in the possession of Mr. F. N. Hancock, of 
Franklin, New Hampshire. 

Webster House at Elms Farm and View of the 
Interval Land S3 

From p?)Otographs by Mr. E. D. Currier, of Franklin, New 
Hampshire. The building on the left of the house is modern. 

Map of The Elms Farm 43 

From a drawing made on the spot by Mr. F. N. Hancock, of 
Franklin, New Hampshire. 

Silhouette of Webster's Mother 45 

From a photograph kindly lent by Mr. Charles Henry Hart, of the 
original in the possession of Mr. Abbot Lawrence. 

Ticknor's Sketch of Dartmouth College in 1803.. 51 

From a photograph by Mr. H. H. H. Langill, of the original 
sketch in the possession of Dartmouth College. 

House in which Webster Lived at Dartmouth, North 
Main Street 71 

From a photograph by H. H. H. Langill of the house as it now 
appears. 

House in which Webster Lived at Dartmouth. 
The Old Wainwright House on South Main 
Street, now Dr. Crosby's 75 

From a photograph by H. H. H. Langill of the house as it now 
appears. 

B xvii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Miniature of Webster at the Age of about Twen- 
ty-two TO Twenty-six ^ ^ 

From a photograph of the original miniature in the possession of 
Mr. F. Lincoln Peirce, of Boston. It is a most interesting portrait, 
showing Webster at the time of life when he was nicknamed 
" all eyes." 

Mrs. Grace Fletcher Webster 85 

From a photograph lent by " McClure's Magazine" of the original . 

portrait by Chester Harding. " McClure's Magazine," vol. ix, . 

p. 629. 1 

Portrait of Webster by an Unknown Artist 119 

From a photograph kindly furnished by Mr. Charles Henry Hart, 
of Philadelphia, of the painting in the possession of the Long | 

Island Historical Society at Brooklyn, New York. A beautiful 
portrait at the time of life when Webster was still called "all 
eyes," and seems intended to emphasize the spiritual and intel- 
lectual side of his nature. 

Webster about 1824. Aged 42 177 J 

From a photograph of the original painting by Gilbert Stuart in '! 

the possession of Mr. George Frederick Williams, of Dedham, 
Massachusetts. 

Portrait of Webster by Harding 201 

From a photograph of the original painting by Chester Harding 
in the possession of Dr. Guy Hinsdale, of Hot Springs, Va. The 
date is unknown, but apparently it represents Webster as a com- 
paratively young man. 

Mrs. Caroline Le Roy Webster 231 

From a photograph lent by " McClure's Magazine" of the original 
drawing by Dubourgal, "McClure's Magazine," vol. ix, p. 630. 

Portrait of Webster by Harding 261 

From a photograph furnished by J. Carroll Payne, Esq., of 
Atlanta, Ga., of the painting in his possession. 

The Webster House AT Marshfield 303 

From a photograph by Mr. L. B. Howard, of Brant Rock, Massa- 
chusetts. 

Webster Tramping over Marshfield 305 

From a photograph lent by" McClure's Magazine" of the original 
painting by Joseph Ames. 

xviii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

General Jackson, with the Hermitage in the Back- 
ground 347 

Though in the setting of the Hermitage, the picture shows the 
General as he used to walk the streets of Washington. From a 
photograph lent by " McClure's Magazine " of the original painting 
by R. E. W. Earl, " McClure's Magazine," vol. ix, p. 800. 

Map of the Northeast Boundary Dispute 401 

Webster in 1845. Age 63 425 

From a photograph lent by " McClure's Magazine" of the original 
painting by Chester Harding, " McClure's Magazine," vol. iv, _ 

p. 624. 

Hat Portrait of Webster 43 7 

From a photograph by F. Gutekunst of the original daguerreo- 
type by F. de Berg Richards, made in Philadelphia, December 3, 
1846, when Webster was 64. 

Webster at the Time of the 7TH of March Speech 469 

From a photograph lent by " McClure's Magazine" of the daguer- 
reotype made by Southworth and Hawes in Boston, April 22, 
1850, " McClure's Magazine," vol. ix. p. 626. A fine, striking 
likeness, and an attitude of defiance that seems to be telling the 
abolitionists to do their worst. 

Daguerreotype of Webster 497 

From a photograph by Mr. H. H. H. Langill of the original in 
the possession of Dartmouth College. This is a most interesting 
side view of Webster. It brings us close to him with start- 
ling realism and almost restores him to life. It is the only picture 
(that seems to show the fine proportioning of his head so often 
described by his contemporaries. Although he is evidently an 
old man, his back and neck appear to be still straight and the 
head well put on. 

Webster Shortly Before His Death 509 

From a photograph lent by " McClure's Magazine" of the original 
daguerreotype made by J. W. Black & Co., of Boston, " McClure's 
Magazine," vol. ix, p. 628. 



I 



The True 
Daniel Webster 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

Daniel Webster, enthusiastically praised and re- 
lentlessly criticised, blindly worshipped and blindly 
hated, once filled a space in public estimation so 
large and important, that the present generation can 
hardly realize it. Eight years he served in the 
lower house of Congress, nineteen in the Senate, five 
years as Secretary of State. He was famous in 1820, 
and from the time of the reply to Hayne in 1830 
to his death in 1852 his reputation was prodigious in 
America and great even in England, although British 
feeling at that time was by no means as friendly to 
this country as it is now. He was the most powerful 
intellect, as some say, and according to others, the most 
dishonorable public man that New England has ever 
produced. During the last years of his life, whenever 
he visited his farm in New Hampshire, crowds gath- 
ered at the stations along the railroad to see him. 
In fact, he gathered crowds everywhere. He was " a 
splendid creature," said his friends. " Yes," said his 
enemies, " a fine animal." " He attained a standing," 
says one of his contemporaries, " from which human 
greatness knows no progress " ; " He seemed so great," 
said Theodore Parker, " that some men thought he was 
himself one of the institutions of America " ; and similar 
statements of what seems now like extravagant admira- 
tion or extravagant abuse, could easily be accumulated. 

IS 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

For many years after his death this enthusiasm, 
accompanied by equally vigorous condemnation, re- 
mained unabated. Men of science speculated on the 
cause of his extraordinary intellectual power, while they 
discussed the size and weight of his brain; and his 
enemies and opponents readily admitted the power of 
his eloquence and personality. 

Some of his own New Englanders denounced him; 
no people denounced him more than they, for his 
defence of the compromise with the slave power in 
1850. There is still, as in Senator Lodge's life of him, 
a resentful sharpness in their criticism. From the 
abolitionist school of Lowell, Emerson, Theodore 
Parker, Longfellow, and Parton came the most violent 
attacks. He was, they tell us, indolent and slothful ; 
not a learned man or learned lawyer, but stealing his 
knowledge from others without giving them credit, — 
a traitor to his own principles and to his own state, a 
dishonorable trimmer and renegade who would sacri- 
fice anything to his desire for the Presidency, a pen- 
sioner on the bounty of others, maintaining the opin- 
ions and interests of those who paid his debts, extrava- 
gant, reckless and careless with money to the point of 
dishonesty, of excessive physique, excessive enjoyment 
of the outer world, devoted excessively to hunting and 
fishing and out-door pleasures, a hypocrite in religion, 
an insolvent, the ally of kidnappers, the agent of the 
slave hunters, the keeper of the slave hunter's dogs, 
a hard drinker, dying a drunkard's death, and calling 
for drink, if we can believe Poore's Reminiscences, with 
his last breath. 

Most of this was enlarged upon because of his part 
in the compromise of 1850; and its justice or injustice 
will become clearer as we proceed. But his accusers' 
name for him was Ichabod, the old Scripture phrase 
which means there was a glory which has departed. 

Of admirable genius, says Parton of him in his 
" Famous Americans," but of deplorable character, one 

16 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

of the largest and one of the weakest of men. " The 
adulation of which he was the victim at almost every 
hour of his existence injured and deceived him. He 
was continually informed that he was one of the great- 
est of living men," until, says Parton, he came to loathe 
this ceaseless incense. His political opinions, complains 
Parker, were regarded as amendments to the consti- 
tution, and his public and private conduct part of -the 
evidences of Christianity. 

This adulation, this incense, this weakness, this 
degeneration, these crimes, they traced back through 
his whole life and wrote biographies of him to show 
how it had begun in his father's house when he was a 
baby, and all to explain why he supported their abomi- 
nation, the Clay Compromise of 1850. 

It was no doubt an age when our people were much 
given to hero worship and extreme and sweeping state- 
ments. But even wnth this allowance, Webster must be 
accounted a man of remarkable genius. It was not 
merely that he could marshal facts and arguments in 
the great fields of law, politics and diplomacy as his 
great contemporaries Napoleon and Wellington mar- 
shalled armies, or that his personal appearance was so 
striking and impressive. These qualities alone would 
not account for his place in the world. His contem- 
porary, Henry Clay, had many of these qualities. In 
fact, innumerable orators have produced wonderful im- 
mediate effects upon their audiences ; but their speeches 
when printed and read in cold blood, sixty years after- 
wards, have not been given as high a permanent value 
as Webster's. His printed speeches are literature and 
literature of a very high order. That is his claim to 
genius. It was this, added to his practical ability as a 
lawyer and statesman, that caused men to stare with 
wonder. No other American, not Clay, Patrick Henry, 
Everett, Choate, or Beecher, has equalled him in this 
respect. We find no men with whom to compare 
him until we go among the greatest orators of the 
2 17 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

world, Chatham, Burke, Cicero, Demosthenes; and 
while these may be his superiors in certain respects, 
and opinions on the question may widely differ, he, 
nevertheless, stands among them and invites compari- 
son. The highest literature of oratory expressing 
American union and nationality more nobly than any 
one else ever expressed it; that is Webster. 

We always long to discover exactly what causes 
produce such men. We have, I suppose, a lurking 
idea that then we might manufacture them at will. 
We shall never learn to manufacture them; but it is 
interesting to try to discover their causes. 

Webster's Hfetime between 1782 and 1852, was a 
period which was productive, in New England, of a 
remarkable list of poets, orators, historians, philoso- 
phers, novelists, and theologians, of such impressive 
literary ability that their works constitute the principal 
part of American literature. 

born born 

Channing 1780 Longfellow 1807 

Webster 1782 Holmes 1809 

Everett 1794 Sumner 1811 

Bryant I794 Phillips 181 1 

Prescott 1796 Theodore Parker 1812 

Bancroft 1800 Motley 1812 

Emerson 1803 Stowe 1812 

Hawthorne 1804 Lowell 1819 

Whittier 1807 Parkman 1823 

These eighteen names, though confined to New 
England alone, stand for literature complete in all the 
departments of poetry, philosophy, history, oratory, 
romance and theology. In fact, they have all the char- 
acteristics of what is usually called a national literature, 
complete in itself. There were other names, like Judge 
Story, Rufus Choate, George Hillard, Edward Everett 
iHale, William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Mann, which 
while perhaps not standing for men of genius were 

18 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

nevertheless of such high talent that they might be 
added to the Hst. The physical appearance of nearly all 
these men, as we look at them now in photographs or 
old daguerreotypes or in the recollection of those who 
can remember them, was also remarkable. They make 
a wonderful collection of vigorous faces ; and the causes 
or forces, whatever they were, tliat produced them must 
have been very powerful and complete. Before that 
period of forty-five years, from 1780 to 1825, no such 
group of men had been produced in this country ; and 
in the subsequent time of nearly a century, there has 
been no continuation of such eminent human products, 
although education and civilization are supposed to have 
advanced and improved. 

Whatever may have been the causes for this outburst 
in New England, Webster seems to have been a part 
of it. To that extent we can account for him ; but to 
account for the movement that produced the group is 
quite another matter. It may have been stimulated by 
the rise in Massachusetts just at that time of Unitarian- 
ism ; the setting free from repression and Puritanism of 
a people long accustomed to a love of knowledge and 
to the exercise of their minds in subtle expression and 
delicate distinctions of a theology which was in its way 
a very intellectual one. This change from Puritanism 
to Unitarianism which began to be felt about the time 
of the Revolution, was, no doubt, the occasion and 
opportunity which gave the natural powers of the 
Massachusetts people a chance to spread out into litera- 
ture ; but whether it was any more than the mere oppor- 
tunity, whether it was a real cause, may be questioned. 

It may have been that New England had at that 
time become a country of homogeneous people, a 
real nation instinctively developing a national literature. 
New England had always been set apart even geograph- 
ically by the line of the Hudson River valley and lakes 
Champlain and George on the west, cutting it off from 



19 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the rest of the continent. Within this domain, which 
was ahnost a large island, were characteristic soil, cli- 
mate and scenery, and a people of very thoroughbred 
stock, unusually united in all their ideas and sympathies. 

The immigration which formed the New England 
colonies had ceased after 1640, and from that time these 
unmixed Anglo-Saxons had developed in the natural 
way by births. The people were all of the same relig- 
ion, of the same ideas of government, and the same inde- 
pendent feeling which resented all interference from 
England and triumphed against her so signally in the 
Revolution. There never has been either before or 
since in any part of America, a stock of people so homo- 
geneous in race, thought, feeling, and religion ; so united 
in their political ideas ; so devoted to education and 
learning; and of such long continued existence in all 
these characteristics. They were ripe for any sort of 
national characteristic and naturally, perhaps, for a 
varied and complete literature. Since then the condi- 
tions have been radically changed. The enormous in- 
flux of foreigners of alien race, ideas and religion have 
made half the population of New England foreign, de- 
stroying the homogeneousness and native feeling. 

It may possibly have been that this outbreak in New 
England was helped, though perhaps not caused, by 
the general ideas of the time, the inspiration of the 
crusade against slavery, the enthusiasm of the nev/ 
democracy, the hopes and experiments in government 
following our own revolution and the revolution in 
France, the confusion and conflict of momentous prin- 
ciples in the Napoleonic wars, the hopes from the mar- 
vellous discoveries in science and the general excite- 
ment and optimism of mind which was such a tonic 
to intellect in the first half of the nineteenth century. 
All this would naturally call out a type of men quite 
different from those called out by the mere development 
of wealth, syndicates and corporations. The contem- 
poraries in Europe of the famous New Englanders 

20 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

were Napoleon, Goethe, Peel, Disraeli, Gladstone, 
Macaulay, Browning, and Tennyson. 

Other explanations have been suggested ; as, for 
example, the wide dittusion in New iingland, for so 
long a time, of education and learning among the com- 
mon people. But in the last sixty years that education 
is generally credited with having been so improved and 
extended that the old methods are quite inadequate and 
ridiculous. On the other hand this very improvement 
has been regarded as an injury, the worshipping of false 
gods under the designation of reforms, and the modern 
school system a manufactory of a machine-made prod- 
uct with interchangeable parts, exactly alike, and any- 
thing like individuality promptly suppressed. Were a 
Shakespeare by any chance, they say, to be dropped 
down to-day, a child, into the common schools of New 
England, all the Shakespeare in him would be at once 
obliterated beyond any possible recognition. 

Following these suggestions in their relation to 
Webster, we find him about as thoroughbred and typical 
a New Englander of that time as it was possible to be, 
a native of the native stock, brought up in the old char- 
acteristic environment of religion, politics and education. 

On his father's side he was descended from the 
Bachilders, or Bachilers, a dark complexioned, dark 
haired family, from whom the poet Whittier was sup- 
posed to be descended. The migrating ancestor of this 
family was a learned miinister of the Gospel, of much 
talent, and an independence of character which kept 
him in continual hot water in the old Puritan days in 
Massachusetts. 

His two descendants, Webster and Whittier, who are 
said to have resembled him and somewhat each other 
in striking appearance, would seem to indicate a pre- 
potency to genius in the strain. Poetic and romantic 
sentiment filled the lives of both of them and was the 
foundation of Webster's oratory. Webster had the 
dark eyes, hair and complexion of the Bachilders in 

21 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

excessive degree. Several of his brothers and sisters 
had the hght complexion of the Websters/ 

He was born in the township of Salisbury^ near the 
present town of Franklin, New Hampshire, on the i8th 
of January, 1782, the year before the signing of the 
treaty of peace, which closed the Revolution, His 
father, Ebenezer Webster, born in 1739, had been 
brought up at Kingston in the southeast corner of New 
Hampshire, near the sea ; and the family, it is said, can 
be traced in church and town records back to their first 
settlement at Hampton on the coast in the year 1636. 
The stock was thoroughly New England, and in the 
line of the father's name they had presumably been I 
farmers and out-of-doors people for many generations. 

Ebenezer is said to have been bound as an appren- 
tice at an early age to a man named Stevens, who 
brought him up; but in violation of the articles of 
apprenticeship, never sent him to school. In 1760, when 
he was about twenty-one, he joined himself to Rogers' 
Rangers and served with them for the rest of the French 
and Indian Wars until the final peace in 1763. These 
rangers were woodsmen soldiers that kept watch on the 
Indians of the New Hampshire northern frontier, re- 
sorting, it is said, to skates and snow-shoes to aid their 
scouting expeditions ; and they also served with Amherst 
in the invasion of Canada. Their commander, Rogers, 
went over to the loyalist side in the Revolution. ^ 

After the close of the French Wars in 1763, there 
was a movement among the people in southern New 
Hampshire to press northwards and settle in the wilder- 

^ Whittier thought himself descended from the Bachilders, 
and it is so stated in Pickard's Hfe of him, vol. i, p. 12. But 
now a genealogist comes along who says that the poet was 
mistaken, and did not know his own ancestry. N. E. History 
and Genealogical Register, 1896, vol. i, p. 295 ; Carpenter's 
Life of Whittier, p. 10. 

* Lyman, Memorials of Webster, pp. 160, 161. The appren- 
tice story is mentioned by Theodore Parker, and does not 
seem improbable, but I know of no good authority for it. 

22 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

ness of the province, which for more than half a century 
had been rendered uninhabitable by the hostility of the 
French in Canada and their allies the Indians. Ebe- 
nezer Webster, then twenty-four years old, and having 
risen to the rank of captain, joined one of these pioneer 
enterprises that started from Kingston, and he took 
up some land for a farm in a new township which, 
under the leadership of Colonel Stevens, to whom he 
had been apprenticed, was laid out upon the edge of the 
wilderness almost in the centre of the province and some 
fifteen miles north of the present town of Concord. 
The township was four miles wide north and south 
along the west side of the Merrimac River, and nine 
miles long in a southwesterly direction to Mount Kear- 
sarge. There was for a long time no particular or im- 
portant town or village. The settlers established their 
clearings here and there, with houses close to the roads 
or trails in the New England manner ; the houses often 
grouped as near together as possible for mutual advan- 
tage and protection. The advance into the wilderness 
in New England had always proceeded by townships in 
this way, instead of by counties and the wider isolation 
of the south. 

Ebenezer's farm, as his distinguished son afterwards 
said, was nearer to the North Star than any other of 
the New England settlements. There was nothing but 
wilderness and Indians beyond it through the White 
Mountains all the way to Canada. The land was about 
three miles w^est of the Merrimac on a hillside sloping 
up from a little stream called Punch brook, still known 
in the neighborhood as something of a trout stream. 
The youthful owner built himself a log cabin, married 
Mehitable Smith, and lived there peacefully for ten or 
twelve years. It was rough, wilderness farming, and 
the land was by no means good, but he had made a 
pitch, as they called it, where land was cheapest. The 
house was built close beside the trail, now a road, and 
only a few yards from Punch brook. The rugged hills, 

23 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

some of them in the distance rising- to the dignity of 
mountains, are still heavily wooded, and the general 
scene, when I visited it in the summer of 1910, was 
probably very much the same as in Webster's boyhood. 

" My mother," says Webster, " was constantly visited by 
Indians who had never before gone to a white man's house 
except to kill its inhabitants, while my father, perhaps, was 
gone, as he frequently was, miles away, carrying on his back 
the corn to be ground which was to support the family." 
(Curtis, vol. i, p. 3, note.) 

The farm was slowly improved ; the Indians had 
ceased to be dangerous ; and the family, no doubt, en- 
joyed their free vigorous life. They dammed Punch 
brook to form a pond and built a grist mill to be run 
by the water power. Some people in the neighborhood 
seem to think it was a saw mill ; but from all the cir- 
cumstances this is not likely ; the saw mill came later, 
probably, and was farther down Punch brook.^ The 
log house was abandoned for a better one built of boards 
on the other side of the road, and close to the mill. 
Whether Webster was born in the log house or in the 
new house has been questioned ; but there should be no 
doubt about it, because in his speech at Saratoga in the 
summer of 1840, he distinctly says that he was not born 
in the log house. If he had been born in the log cabin 
he might perhaps have attained the Presidency of the 
nation ; for his whig friend Harrison attained that 
honor largely through his log cabin birth, which was a 
powerful source of popularity at that time. 

The log house, and very likely the new house, long 
ago disappeared. Photographs and engravings of the 
house now on the land are often published as the birth- 
place of Webster, but this house was built long after 
Webster's time. A small one story addition to it has 



*A very old saw blade was recently found in Punch 
brook, at the site of the mill. But see Private Correspondence, 
vol. i, p. 60, for rather strong evidence that the mill was for 
grinding corn. 

24 



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en 



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r o 

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^^^^^--^^^.J#. 



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—^Si^y 






4 '« '^T 5. 



ill'! 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

been supposed to be the house built to replace the log 
cabin ; but judging from what I learned on a visit 
there this is hardly probable.* A sketch, however, 
of the house which replaced the log cabin was made by 
Webster's private secretary, Lanman, approved by 
Webster as correct, and has been reproduced for this 
volume. It is diiTerent in appearance from the one- 
story addition to the modern house. The windows are 
differently placed and so is the chimney. 

In the log cabin five children were born, and in 
March, 1774, the wife died. In August of the same 
year Ebenezer married Abigail Eastman, who also bore 
him five children, of whom Daniel was the next to the 
youngest. This circumstance of his being the youngest 
son and next to the youngest child, has been cited by 
those who believe that geniuses and remarkable charac- 
ters are more apt to appear in the maturer and later 
years of the parents. 

When the Revolution broke out in 1775 Ebenezer 
took at times a very active part in it. He led a com- 
pany of his neighbors to join the New England army 
that locked up the British in Boston. He was at the 
Battle of White Plains in 1776, and went to the relief 
of Ticonderoga in 1777. He fought at Bennington, 
where he was among the first to scale the breastwork of 
the German troops and came out so covered with dust 
and blackened with powder that he could scarcely be 
recognized. He was at West Point at the time of 
Arnold's treason, and is said to have stood guard or 
commanded the guard before Washington's headquar- 
ters the night after the treason. Washington is re- 
ported to have said : " Captain Webster, I believe I 
can trust you." A great deal of the time he was 
probably at home, like other continental soldiers, look- 

* General Lyman, who visited the place in 1849, says of the 
house in which Webster was born, that not a vestige of it 
remained except the cellar. Memorials of Webster, vol. i, 
p. 170. 

25 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

ing after his family and farm and serving on those 
committees which carried on civil government and 
repressed the loyalists. This method of being with 
the army in summer, or in an emergency, and the rest 
of the time keeping their family and property together 
and managing local politics, was a makeshift, trouble- 
some method. But it had its advantages, for when at 
home they were to some extent increasing the patriot 
resources by farming, and were not bankrupting Wash- 
ington's army by living on its slender supplies. 

Though made a colonel of militia in 1785 Ebenezer 
Webster was generally, in his own neighborhood, called 
Captain, the rank he had had in the Revolution. His 
education was slight. He had never been to school, it 
is said, but had taught himself to read and write, and 
some of the earliest records of the township are in his 
handwriting. His ability was not remarkable and yet 
it might have been so if he had had an education. That 
was his own opinion of himself ; and in a modified way 
he seems to have had the beginnings of some of the 
qualities which made his son illustrious. Even without 
education he had strong character, sense and judg- 
ment. He held numerous public offices, took part in 
establishing a circulating library in his neighborhood, 
served in both branches of the legislature, was a member 
of the convention which ratified the Federal Constitu- 
tion, but was not, as has been supposed, a member of 
the convention that framed the State constitution to take 
the place of the old colony government of New Hamp- 
shire.^ In the latter part of his life he was made a lay 
judge of the county court of common pleas. 

His service in the New Hampshire convention of 
1788 which voted to adopt the National Constitution, 
which his son became so distinguished for defending 
against nullification and secession, and at another time 
was so maligned for supporting its compromise with 

° New Hampshire State Papers, vol. vii, p. 704 ; vol. x, 

P- S- 

26 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

slavery, is certainly interesting and has raised a rather 
curious controversy. A majority of the delegates to 
that convention went to it instructed by their con- 
stituencies to vote against the acceptance of the new 
constitution, because it compromised with the South, 
permitted the existence of slavery and the return of 
fugitive slaves. Slavery, though permitted by the laws 
of New Hampshire, was not congenial to the people or 
the soil and died a natural death, without formal aboli- 
tion. Ebenezer Webster represented Salisbury, but had 
a committee to advise him. This committee advised 
against the Constitution ; but as the story goes, Ebe- 
nezer finally obtained permission in favor of the Con- 
stitution, and when the vote was about to be taken, 
made a remarkable speech. 

" Mr. President, I have listened to the arguments for 
and against the Constitution. I am convinced such a govern- 
ment as that Constitution will establish, if adopted — a govern- 
ment acting directly on the people of the States — is necessary 
for the common defense and the general welfare. It is the only 
government which will enable us to pay oflf the national debt — 
the debt which we owe for the Revolution, and which we are 
bound in honor fully and fairly to discharge. Besides I have 
followed the lead of Washington through seven years of war, 
and I have never been misled. His name is subscribed to this 
Constitution. He will not mislead us now. I shall vote for 
its adoption." (Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, p. 552.) 

If that was his speech, it shows us exactly where 
Daniel got his oratory as finally matured, even his 
famous use of short sentences and several small touches 
of style. Indeed, it is quite a startling and close sum- 
mary of the Reply to Hayne and the Reply to Calhoun. 
But, unfortunately, there is a fly in the amber, and 
the journal of the convention shows that when the 
Constitution came up for final adoption or rejection, 
Ebenezer was one of four delegates who were marked 
present, but did not vote at all. If he made such a 
fine speech why did he not vote for the object of his 
admiration, especially if, as is said, he made the speech 

27 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

just as the vote was about to be taken. Approval of 
the Constitution was carried by a very narrow margin 
and almost every vote was needed. There is a tradition 
that some of the four not voting were enticed away by 
a good dinner in another part of the town, and if Ebe- 
nezer was one of them, it would account for another 
trait in his son. But seriously, this supposed speech is 
not well authenticated. It rests on mere oral tradition 
and may have been touched up by several hands. 
Though interesting, and even beautiful in its way, it is 
perhaps, a little too much so.*' 

About a year after Daniel was born the family 
moved about three miles eastward to a farm on the 
banks of the Merrimac. In fact, they just followed 
down Punch Brook, as one still does by a rough road, 
to where it flows into the river, and then turned south- 
ward into some fine level interval land. Mrs. Call, 
the mother of the family from whom they bought this 
land, had been killed there by the Indians in 1775, and 
there was on the place the remains of an old stockade 
fort. General Stark, when hunting near there many 
years before, had been captured by the Indians and car- 
ried to Canada.'^ 

The farm was afterwards called The Elms 
from the numerous trees of that sort near the house. 
But at first the Websters lived in a house which for 
fifteen years they kept as a tavern ; and Lanman says 
that young Daniel had even then those wonderful tones 
of voice, and the teamsters stopping at the tavern would 
get him to read aloud passages from the Bible. Half 
a century afterwards when Webster was delivering 

' Mr. A. S. Batchellor, editor of the New Hampshire State 
Papers, has kindly furnished some references on this subject. 
Walker, History of N. H. Federal Convention, pp. 4, 17, Z7, 
43, 44; Proceedings of N. H. Bar Association, vol. i, p. 136; 
History of Salisbury, p. 115; Journal of Convention N. H. 
State Papers, p. 9. See also Curtis Life of Webster, vol. i, 
p. 9; Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, p. 552. 

' Lanman, Private Life of Webster, p. 123. 

28 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

political speeches in Ohio, a man came up to him and 
said, " Is this the little black Dan that used to water 
the horses ? " And the dignified statesman replied with- 
out the slightest hesitation, " Yes, this is the little black 
Dan that used to water the horses." 

In 1799 his father exchanged houses with his son- 
in-law, William Haddock , and went to live in what 
became known as The Elms House, a few hundred 
yards away, which, with a modern addition, is still 
standing close to the road, and constitutes part of a 
flourishing State Orphan School. There seem to have 
been several houses grouped comparatively near to- 
gether along the road in the usual New England 
fashion.^ In recent times there has been an inclination 
to ignore the tavern period as unbecoming the distin- 
guished subject of this biography. But as Webster 
himself did not ignore it, and, according to his private 
secretary, Lanman, went in his old age and sat on its 
porch and told stories of his boyhood, no apology seems 
to be needed for recording the fact. 

This move to a more valuable farm, better in soil 
and apparently with several tenant houses on it and 
good buildings, would seem to indicate a decided im- 
provement in the circumstances of the family. But 
their resources were always small, the farm mortgaged, 
and the three hundred dollars the father received for 
his judgeship a godsend. The classes who made any 
money in the period of the Revolution were speculators, 
privateer owners, and certain merchants and lucky in- 
dividuals. The farmers who became soldiers (and the 
armies were made up principally of farmers), usually 
made no headway and often lost everything. Ebenezer 
was probably very fortunate to be no worse of¥ than 
he was. His small means and the habits of debt and 



'For the date when Ebenezer moved from the tavern 
house I am indebted to Mr. F. N. Hancock, who lives at the 
spot and whose ancestor, Benjamin Sanborn, was a contem- 
porary of Ebenezer Webster and a grantee of adjoining land. 

29 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

borrowing entailed on his children have been supposed 
to account for certain unfortunate traits in the career 
of his distinguished son. 

The narrow finances of the family must not, how- 
ever, mislead us. Standards and conditions were dif- 
ferent in those days. There is little or no trace of 
coarseness in the family history. In fact, everything 
that we know with any certainty about them, especially 
their letters, rather surprises us by a certain refine- 
ment, perhaps more common then than now, but a char- 
acteristic still to be found among New Englanders of 
small means. Daniel's apparently instinctive refinement, 
shown not only in his language, but in his ideas and 
whole mental attitude, has surprised investigators, and 
there has been an inclination to account for it by subse- 
quent experiences in his career. But the family evi- 
dently had the Puritan respect for learning ; the father's 
mother had been the daughter of a Puritan minister ; 
and the father educated himself apparently to his 
utmost. His interest in establishing a circulating 
Hbrary, the public offices he held, and the ease with 
which his son Daniel passed into other social classes 
imply something more than a narrow or coarse outlook 
on the world. We find the same characteristics in 
John Adams of the Revolution, who was also the son 
of a small farmer. 

The son Daniel was marked from all the rest of 
the family by delicate health, so delicate that for a 
long time he was never asked to do any of the heavy 
and important work on the farm. His brothers and 
sisters were strong. His father is described as a dark- 
haired, tall, robust and handsome man, genial, friendly 
and humorous. The mother, judging from a silhouette 
that has come down to us, seems to have been a stout, 
vigorous woman, with a face of marked character and 
intelligence. 

The exceptional delicacy of Daniel in a family of 
such vigorous children and parents was, no doubt, due 

30 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

to his precocious brain, and strong emotional nature 
which became the foundation of his eloquence. In 
after-life, Webster was, like Henry Clay, very emo- 
tional. Tears uncontrollable would well into his eyes. 
Scenes in nature, people, occasions, high thoughts, 
roused him to intensity. Such a nature in childhood 
draws severely on the vital forces. 

He was unusually fond of reading both to himself 
and aloud. His father is said to have had a saw mill 
on Punch Brook, part way between The Elms and his 
old place, and there is a tale that Daniel would set the 
log and then sit down and read a book during the ten 
or fifteen minutes that the old-fashioned saw was pass- 
ing through the timber.^ He read everything he could 
find, and committed a great deal of it to memory. He is' 
said to have bought at William Ho}1:'s country store, just 
across the road from The Elms House, a cotton hand- 
kerchief on which the Constitution of the United States 
had been printed soon after its adoption, as one of the 
means of giving it a wide circulation. Daniel sat down 
under one of the elms, General Lyman tells us, and 
read it. It was his first acquaintance with the docu- 
ment he was to become so famous in defending; and 
Rufus Choate in his eulogy reminds us that Napoleon 
when a boy played with a little cannon and that Mar- 
tin Luther found amusement in a Latin translation of 
the Bible. 

Daniel's unusual mind and emotionalism were evi- 
dently sucking away the vital force that enabled his 
less gifted brothers to swing heavy axes and plough 
all day long. We all have known instances of this 
early development ; and if we can believe certain edu- 
cators and physicians a large proportion of these chil- 
dren are in modern times either killed or ruined for 
any high purpose by our excessive system of educa- 

• Dearborn, History of Salisbury, N. H., p. 156; Lanman, 
Private Life of Webster, pp. 18, 21, 22; Lyman, Memorials 
of Webster, vol. i, p. 197. 

31 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

tion. Their minds seem already so promising that it is 
believed that they can be forced to wonderful results, 
when the true method is to let them alone, not force 
them at all, or even stop their schooling. Little Daniel 
and Henry Clay in the modern environment would have 
bent over desks, breathed bad air, become excessively 
smart, worn spectacles at fourteen, and for the rest 
of their lives have been brilliant minds in crippled 
bodies, seedy, solemn-faced and peculiar. 

But Webster was born to more fortunate condi- 
tions. His parents knew none of the modem reason- 
ing on these subjects ; there were no books on nervous 
diseases; and in old Dr. Johnson's dictionary the word 
nervous meant strong. The parents did exactly the 
right thing, for Daniel. He was expected to do only 
the lightest work; he was taught to read, he could not 
remember when, but supposed his mother and sisters 
taught him; and for the rest he could play and roam 
through the woods and fields to his, heart's content. 

He acquired, as he tells us, a love of play and an 
admiration for the great out-of-doors, which lasted all 
his life ; and as a boy he certainly had golden oppor- 
tunities at Elms Farm. Its flat, fertile fields stretched 
toward the shores of the Merrimac, only a few hundred 
yards away. High hills, the foothills of the White 
Mountains, bounded the sides of the valley ; and beyond 
them the great elephant-like masses of the main range 
began to lift themselves to view. Less than three miles 
north of the farm the two streams, the Pemigewasset 
and the Winnepisoegee, unite to form the Merrimac. 
The first, "the beau-ideal of a mountain stream, cold, 
noisy and winding," as Webster called it, comes direct 
from the innumerable brooks of the mountain slopes. 
The other is the outlet of Lake Winnepisoegee. What 
a playground it was for a giant intellect! Could the 
gods themselves have designed a better nursery for the 
infant Hercules? 

He wandered all over it; he became a naturalist, 

32 




♦^ \\ 



s 



■WEBSTER HOUSE AT ELMS FARM 




THE INTERVAL LAND ALONG THE RI\ER, ELMS PARM 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

a minute observer of nature and a sportsman. He 
watched how the river changed its bed or deepened 
its channel, " the philosophy of streams," as he after- 
wards called it. He rem.embered all his life how the 
salmon and the shad came up the river in the spring, 
" shook hands and parted " at the confluence of the 
two streams, " the shad all going into the warmer water 
of the lake and the salmon keeping in the cold mountain 
torrent, which they continued to ascend, as used to be 
said, until their back fins were out of water." ^^ 

An old Englishman, Robert Wise, who had been a 
sailor with Admiral Byng in the Mediterranean, a 
soldier at the Battle of Minden, and had deserted to 
the Americans in the Revolution, had a cottage with his 
wife on the Webster farm. He taught Daniel to fish, 
wandered over the country with him and told him tales 
of France, Spain, and Holland and the " yellow-haired 
Prince Ferdinand." 

" Alas, poor Robert ! I have never so attained the narra- 
tive art as to hold the attention of others as thou with thy 
Yorkshire tongue hast held mine. Thou hast carried me many 
a mile on thy back, paddled me over and over and up and down 
the stream, and given whole days in aid of my boyish sports ; 
and asked no meed but that at night I would sit down at thy 
cottage door and read to thee some passages of thy country's 
glory!" (Autobiograph}', Correspondence, vol. i, p. i6.) 

In recent years, with our immense urban popula- 
tions, cut off from the woods and fields, nature study, as 
it is called, has been introduced into our schools to 
mitigate the rank materialism and contempt for every- 
thing else, which are the bane of American life. It 
is supposed to restore that honest admiration and en- 
thusiasm for the beauties of nature and the universe 
of God, which are primitive and elemental in mankind. 
Webster got this " culture study " in the fullest measure 
and it tinged the point of view of his eloquence and all 
his after life. Henry Clay had this same passion for 

" Lyman, Memorials of Webster, vol. i, pp. 155-159. 
3 33 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

nature and used to say that his farm at Ashland was 
his real life and politics and law incidentals. Web- 
ster's passion for such things was stronger, and he was 
always escaping to nature and sport at the slightest 
opportunity. His speeches charm the mind because you 
see through the words into nature. His luminous 
statement of dry, legal and political ideas is usually 
luminous because he instinctively illustrates it from 
something in those scenes of nature in which his intel- 
lect lived nine-tenths of the time. 

The sun, moon and stars, the ocean and winds, 
animals, trees and homely scenes and thoughts are 
found at the basis of nearly all the remarkable quota- 
tions from his works. The first words of the famous 
reply to Hayne spellbound his audience by the sudden 
appeal to universal human sympathy, to the mariner 
tossed about in thick weather and on an unknown sea 
and suddenly availing himself of the first glance of i 
the sun to take his latitude. 

As he grew older he had to be given the slight 
schooling which the neighborhood afforded. His father 
was anxious to educate his children to the full extent 
of his limited ability. The schools were kept by what' 
may be called itinerant teachers, who taught part ofi 
each year in several neighborhoods. Daniel followed 
them about, sometimes having to walk two or three; 
miles and when too far away he was boarded in at 
family near the teacher. 

"In these schools," he says, "nothing was taught but 
reading and writing; and as to them, the first I generallyl 
could perform better than the teacher, and the last a good; 
master could hardly instruct me in ; writing was so laborious, 
irksome and repulsive an occupation to me always. My masters 
used to tell me that they feared, after all, my fingers were 
destined for the plough tail." (Autobiography, Correspond- 
ence, vol. i, p. 7.) 

These teachers were usually, no doubt, very young 
men, students themselves, as was so long the custom in 

34 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

New England. One of them named Tappan must have 
been quite young, for he outhved Webster, and one of 
the last acts of Webster's life was to send him a pres- 
ent of money for his old age." 

Webster's contemporary, Henry Clay, with whom 
one always instinctively compares him, had this same 
sort of schooling in a little log house in Virginia, 
and in the end far less education than Webster, It was 
not a severe education in those New Hampshire winter 
schools to which the boys came romping through the 
deep snow with their breath frozen in hoar frost on 
their curly hair. It would hardly have been an injury 
to the nervous system. When we consider the elabo- 
rateness and the time spent, the number and variety of 
studies of the modem school system, the ever-changing 
text-books each one more perfect than its predecessor, 
the ever-changing theories each one stamping its prede- 
cessor as ridiculous, we wonder at the old-fashioned 
system of our fathers which seems to have produced 
as good culture and ability as our own. When we con- 
sider the vast expenditure of thought, energy, experi- 
ment, and money to produce during the last seventy 
years the modern system, it seems at times as if the 
result was hardly in proportion to the effort. Of 
course, changed conditions, science, steam and electric- 
ity, vast wealth and enormous population have pro- 
duced the modern complexity of life, up to which, we 
are told, we must be educated. If we must have a 
huge population like China and the East we must be 
content with a sort of Chinese civilization, in which 
individuality is considerably suppressed. We have now 
such enormous masses of future voters, that we must 
educate them artificially, even at tlie cost of crippling 
or even killing considerable numbers of them, and some 
of these the brightest and most ambitious. From the 
utilitarian point of view, such sacrifice of the innocents 

" Lanman's Private Life of Webster, p. 17. 

35 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

may be absolutely necessary for the general result. 
But at the same time it may be well to know exactly 
what we are doing", and not to forget some of the 
obvious advantages of Daniel Webster's youth, as well 
as of the youth of Henry Clay and other remarkable 
men of that era. As a foundation of eminent ability, 
or any ability, it is difficult to find any substitute for 
physical well-being and native freshness ; and eloquence 
is as much a physical as a mental quality. 

As he passed on his teens Daniel's delicate health be- 
gan to improve. He began to do some of the heavier 
farm work ; but was slow, he admits, to learn to mow ; 
and was continually asking his father to hang his 
scythe differently. At last the father's patience was 
exhausted and he told the boy to hang the scythe to suit 
himself, whereupon Daniel, as the story goes, hung it 
in a tree and left the field. 

When once his youthful ill health had passed, his 
constitution became remarkably vigorous. His mature 
life was comparatively free from illness and disease 
until the one of which he died after a life of severe 
toil when over seventy years old. His resisting power 
was excellent ; he seems to have suffered from none of 
the ordinary acute diseases ; and was rarely during his 
long life disabled from his very arduous labors. Dur- 
ing his last eighteen years he was more or less troubled, 
his physician said, with a tendency to diarrhoea, becom- 
ing persistent during the last three years of his life. 
During most of the same period he had annual hay 
fever. He is generally supposed to have injured him- 
self by the convivial habits he learned among the Sena- 
tors in Washington. In May, 1852, when more than 
seventy years old, he was hurled from his wagon and 
received injuries, especially in the head, which it was 
thought at the time would have killed most strong men. 
But he recovered and made speeches and wrote diplo- 
matic papers, wdiich showed an unimpaired intellect. 
About four months after the accident his physician 
noticed the first symptoms of cirrhosis of the liver, of 

36 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

which he died in about two months. During his last 
hours, as well as in his previous life, his power of 
resistance to disease surprised his physicians. 

Both physically and mentally he evidently went back 
to some very powerful origin. His brothers and sisters, 
though more vigorous in the beginning, were rather 
short lived ; and he far outlived them all. As soon 
as he had conquered that early youthful weakness, 
which he tells us was not until he was twenty-five, he 
grew rapidly into that superbly robust and powerful 
man of intellect which, it is said, once caused a work- 
man in the streets of Liverpool to turn and exclaim, 
" My God, there goes a king ! " Anecdotes of this 
sort are numerous all through his life. His physique 
was so impressive, it so exactly matched the intellect 
that flamed in his black eyes under their heavy brows, 
that he could hardly have avoided the universal dis- 
tinction that awaited him. Theodore Parker said that 
he had a lion's mouth that could smile as softly as a 
woman's. The muscles and nerves in his face must 
have been of very perfect development and no actor 
ever had them under better control. 

Though fond of good living and wine, he is said 
not to have smoked in his mature years, and his white, 
handsome teeth, an inheritance it seems from his father, 
retained their appearance until late in life. He was not 
tall ; five feet ten inches, his physician reported ; and 
his usual weight 190 pounds.^- But he always gave the 

"American Journal of Medical Sciences, January, 1853, 
vol. XXV, p. no; Harvey Reminiscences, pp. 7, 210, 277; Lan- 
man, Private Life of Webster, pp. 119, 179, 20, 117. When a 
youth just out of college he appears to have smoked. Cor- 
respondence, vol. i, pp. 93, 118. Harvey says that at Marsh- 
field he kept cigars for his friends, but did not use them him- 
self. There has been much dispute about his height, some 
guesses going over 6 feet. I have given 5 feet 10, because it 
is the report of the physician who made the post-mortem 
examination. Senator Hoar gives his height as a trifle over 
5 feet 9 inches and his weight as 154 pounds, but says that 
he always looked as if he were over 6 feet and weighed 200. 
Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. i, p. 142. 

37 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

impression of being taller than he reall}' was. It was 
the harmony of proportion, the infusion of mind and 
physical strength in his whole appearance, that pro- 
duced this efifect. As he advanced into middle age the 
slimness seen in his early portraits changed. He be- 
came broad and heavy around the chest ; and it was 
no doubt at this period that his weight went up to 190 
pounds, too much, according to the usual rule, for his 
height. In the first half of his career, judging from 
his portraits, his weight could hardly have exceeded 
165 pounds. One of his most marked characteristics 
in the latter half of his life was a peculiar fimmess 
of tread and firm solidity when he stood to speak, 
which added greatly to his impressiveness.^-'^ That 
solid building of argument, step by step, irrefragable 
and unescapable, while his delighted hearers listened 
almost breathless, was conformable with his whole ap- 
pearance. This characteristic is evidently intended to 
be conveyed in the Burnham bronze statue of him in 
Central Park, New York ; and it appears in the daguer- 
reotype taken of him when he was sixty-eight years 
old at the time of the seventh of March speech. Those 
w^ere the days of his vigorous old age when his black 
eyes still flamed under his superb brow and his face 
was " rugged with volcanic fires." 

It was a picture, they say, to see Webster in the 
Supreme Court, standing firm as a rock, beautifully 
dressed and solemnly listening to old Chief Justice Mar- 
shall, an almost equally picturesque figure, delivering 
an opinion. Webster's hands and feet, it is said, were 
rather small, and his forearm was not long like Henry 
Clay's. This comparative shortness of forearm was 
probably the reason why Webster made so few gestures. 
It is rather difficult for a man with a short forearm to 
make good or graceful gestures in public speaking. 
Clay's long arm and hand w^ere in this respect a great 
advantage. 

" Everett, Orations and Speeches, vol. iv, p. 159. 

38 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

Webster is described as a young man by N. P. 
Rogers, of New Hampshire, who, with perhaps some 
exaggeration, gives the picturesque impression he pro- 
duced in one of his first important cases. 

"There was a man tried for his life and the judges chose 
Webster to plead for him : and from what I can learn, he 
never has spoken better than he did there where he first 
began. He was a black raven-haired fellow with an eye 
as black as death's and as heavy as a lion's — that same heavy 
look, not sleepy, but as if he did not care about anything 
that was going on about him or anything anywhere else. He 
did not look as if he was thinking about anything, but as if he 
would think like a hurricane if he once got waked up to it. 
They say the lion looks so when he is quiet. . . . Webster 
would sometimes be engaged to argue a case just as it was 
coming to trial. That would set him thinking. It would 
not wrinkle his forehead, but made him restless. He would 
shift his feet about, and run his hand up over his forehead, 
through his Indian-black hair, and lift his upper lip and show 
his teeth, which were as white as a hound's." (Harvey's 
Reminiscences, p. 49.) 

WilHam Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, who saw 
most of the distinguished men of both Europe and 
America, remarks on how often their personal appear- 
ance failed to conform to the impression one had 
acquired from their deeds or writings ; and he was 
particularly struck with this when he saw the very weak 
presence of Wilberforce. But Webster, he said, was 
a remarkable instance of perfect conformity of physique 
to intellect. He looked what he was. 

" His body is compact and of Atlantean massiveness, with- 
out being gross ; his head is of magnificent proportions — the 
perfection of vast capaciousness ; his glance is a mingling of 
the sunshine and the lightning of heaven ; his features are full 
of intellectual greatness." (W. L. Garrison, The Story of His 
Life, vol. i, p. 357.) 

In mature years he became very careful and precise 
in his dress and appearance. In fact, he dressed most 
carefully for every speech. The costume he finally 
adopted for the court and the Senate was a blue coat 

39 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

with brass buttons, cut very much Hke the modem 
evening dress coat, a buff waistcoat and black trousers. 
This was his fighting uniform known everywhere, and 
he always looked particularly handsome in it. For 
other occasions he is said to have worn white or col- 
ored waistcoats, and often white trousers. His friend 
Mr. Curtis has described him in middle age as full 
of life and health, " as capacious of labor as of the 
enjoyment of all that the senses can enjoy, perfect in 
grace, and dignity, speaking in every motion and every 
look of power and energy and vitality." 

His supreme confidence was always one of the strik- 
ing characteristics of his genius, and a very important 
part of his success as an orator. In every presence he 
was unconsciously pre-eminent. Such elemental cool- 
ness goes only with sound nerves and a perfection of 
physical constitution which has every faculty under 
complete control and obedient to instant call. No man 
of his time grasped more easily and completely the 
whole complexity of a contest or a debate ; no man saw 
so instantly the bearing of every point and turn as it 
arose. He prepared himself for the least or for the 
greatest occasion merely by having his mind full of 
the subject, and then he was ready at any moment to 
pour it forth or use it as required. After the first 
shyness of youth had passed vast audiences and mo- 
mentous occasions had no terrors or embarrassments 
for Webster. 

His contemporaries said that he always began a 
speech in a low key. His appearance and equipoise 
were very impressive as he arose ; but he spoke very 
quietly at first and was gradually aroused by the im- 
portance of his arguments and subject. He would 
never go beyond the occasion. If he were addressing 
the court on a point of law, and ladies and spectators 
had crowded in to hear him, they heard nothing but a 
dry, legal argument, though delivered in very im- 
pressive tones. No amount of flattery could move him 

40 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

from the path of good taste. He never attempted, Hke 
so many orators of his time, to create an artificial crisis 
or to make the small magnificent. 

So many distinguished men have risen from appa- 
rently adverse circumstances on farms, or on the fron- 
tier in America, that it has become a commonplace of 
biography to magnify the difficulties of such an origin 
and exalt the character that has overcome such over- 
whelming impediments. I question, however, whether 
in this country such impediments have ever been real 
ones. The notion was, no doubt, borrowed from Eu- 
rope, where the peasantry have been held down by 
law or artificial distinctions. In America the so-called 
difHculties of " humble origin and youthful poverty " 
have been in many cases most decided advantages. But 
the general tone has been so long the other way and 
popular oratory has so exaggerated the misery and 
hopelessness of any boy not born a millionaire, and 
the miracle of his rising out of it, that men are often 
ashamed to admit that they had any advantages in their 
youth and instinctively belittle their early education. 

There have been, of course, attempts to give Web- 
ster the distinction of rising out of miseries and hard- 
ships. The " dark frowning forests " of his early home, 
the terrors of that bleak climate and wilderness, and 
the destitution of farm life are suggested in the usual 
way as if they had been demons conspiring to crush him. 
But it is more likely that they were his good angels 
conspiring to give every advantage tO' a precocious 
mind. 

I spent four years at school within twenty miles 
of Webster's home in New Hampshire. I have seen 
the thermometer go to thirty degrees below zero, the 
snow deep on the ground from November to April, and 
every vehicle changed from wheels to runners. I have 
snow-shoed over the hills, canoed on the lakes and 
streams, climbed old Kearsarge and encountered almost 
all the characteristics of nature in that region. It 

41 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

would require a great deal to convince me that there 
is anything but light, beauty and bounding health in 
those foothills of the White Mountains. I can recol- 
lect nothing dark or frowning except the faces of my 
teachers ; and I do not believe that Webster's home and 
its surroundings could have been improved upon. 

His father's experiences in the French Wars and 
the Revolution, related by the fireside, must have been 
inspiring to a boy. The father had a fine voice, " an 
untaught, yet correct ear," the son says, " and a keen 
perception of all that was beautiful or sublime in 
thought,"" He often read the Bible aloud to his 
children, especially the grand poetry of the Old Testa- 
ment. Hence those marvelous tones of the son and his 
love for all similar literature. Hence, also, no doubt, 
the son's correct ear, and fine sense of harmony in the 
formation of sentences. The same father's prominence 
in the politics of the State was another important prep- 
aration for the son. Is there a modern university that 
can give any more ? 

Webster himself, it is perhaps needless to say, had 
never a complaint to make of the circumstances of his 
youth. He despised all the tricks of the demagogue 
and that one among them. He loved all the scenes and 
circumstances of his childhood and was proud of them. 
Henry Clay once descended so far as to make capital 
for himself by saying that he had inherited from his 
father nothing but ignorance and indigence. But rather 
than say such a thing as that Webster would have cut 
off his right hand. 

When he was fourteen his father became more am- 
bitious for him, and one hot July day in the hay field 
announced his intention to give him a better education 
than the other children. Either on account of his deli- 
cate health or his talents, Daniel seems to have been 
always particularly favored by the whole family, an 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, p. 572. 

42 



o 

3 

O ^d 
-J 
p 

^ o 
5" ^ 



"TI C/1 




J 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

unfortunate circumstance, says Senator Lodge, and one 
which tended to spoil him and produce some of the less 
desirable traits of his later years. 

" Of a hot day in July, it must have been in one of the 
last years of Washington's administration, I was making hay 
with my father, just where I now see a remaining elm tree. 
About the middle of the forenoon the Honorable Abiel Foster, 
M.C., who lived in Canterbury, six miles off, called at the 
house, and came into the field to see my father. He was a 
worthy man, college learned, and had been a minister, but 
was not a person of any considerable natural power. My 
father was his friend and supporter. He talked awhile in the 
field, and went on his way. When he was gone my father 
called me to him and we sat down beneath the elm, on a hay- 
cock. He said, ' My son, that is a worthy man ; he is a mem- 
ber of congress ; he goes to Philadelphia and gets six dollars 
a day, while I toil here. It is because he had an education 
which I never had. If I had had his early education I should 
have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near it as it 
was. But I missed it, and now I must work here.' ' My dear 
father,' said I, ' you shall not work. Brother and I will work 
for you, and will wear our hands out, and you shall rest.' 
And I remember to have cried and I cry now at the recollec- 
tion. ' My child,' said he, ' it is of no importance to me. I 
now live but for my children. I could not give your elder 
brothers the advantages of knowledge, but I can do something 
for you. Exert yourself, improve your opportunities, learn, 
learn, and when I am gone, you will not need to go through 
the hardships which I have undergone, and which have made 
me an old man before my time.'" (Correspondence, vol. ii, 
p. 228.) 

It might be questioned which, in the end, went 
through the most hardships, the father or the son. 
But the following May, 1796, the son went to the 
Phillips Academy at Exeter, since then a famous school, 
but at that time of only about fifteen years' standing. 

The boy had been much of a reader at home, as was 
apparently the whole family. He had read Addison's 
" Spectator," one of the chief standards of the time, 
and a book on which, it will be remembered, Benjamin 
Franklin trained himself in his youth, and which is 
supposed to have helped to give him his masterful 

43 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

facility in the use of language. Webster may owe 
almost as great a debt to it. He tells us of his delight 
in reading the verses of Chevy Chase quoted in it. " I 
could not understand," he says, " why it was necessary 
that the author of the ' Spectator ' should take such 
great pains to prove that Chevy Chase was a good 
story; that was the last thing I doubted." He had 
learned by heart the psalms and hymns of Dr. Watts, 
and could repeat the whole of Pope's " Essay on Man." 
" We had so few books," he says, " that to read them 
once or twice was nothing. We thought that they were 
all to be got by heart." 

In short, the boy's susceptible mind was nourished 
on some of the most vigorous literature in the language 
wrought into his being by memorizing. What could be 
a better standard than Chevy Chase, that most exciting 
of deer hunts, in which " before high noon they had 
a hundred fat bucks slain." And before sunset the 
hunters under Earl Percy and Earl Douglas had slain 
each other by thousands. The simplicity of the narra- 
tive will delight us forever. 

" To drive the deere with hound and home 
Erie Percy took his way. 
The child may rue that is unborn 
The hunting of that day." 

Then that archer who had a " bow bent in his 
hand made of a trusty tree " — was there ever a more 
perfect sentence of primitive directness than his use of 
the bow upon Sir Hugh ? 

"Against Sir Hugh Montgomery, 
So right the shaft he sett, 
The grey goose wing that was thereon, 
In his heart's blood was wett." 

Perhaps we now have the source of some of those 
telling sentences Webster learned to use. Nor were 
the hymns he memorized from Dr. Watts to be despised. 

44 




SILHOUETTE OF WEBSTER S MOTHER 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

We smile at the good old doctor nowadays, especially 

for that one among his hymns for children, which 

begins, 

" Let dogs delight to bark and bite ; 
For God hath made them so. 
Let bears and lions growl and fight; 
For 'tis their nature too." 

But surely it was expressive. Many generations of 
New Englanders were brought up on Dr. Watts. Much 
of his verse is full of beauty ; and much of it has the 
primitive directness of expression. For example: 

" Were I so tall to reach the pole, 
Or grasp the ocean in my span, 
I must be measured by my soul, 
The mind's the standard of the man." 

The New Hampshire boy was influenced by this, 
and by the primitive directness of the Old Testament; 
and when Sir Walter Scott's poetry began to appear, 
the verse Webster loved best to repeat, his secretary 
says, was one of this same primitive directness from the 
"Lay of the Last Minstrel." 

" The stag hounds, weary with the chase. 
Lay stretched upon the rushy floor. 
And urged in dreams the forest race, 
From Teviot-stone to Eskdale moor." 

(Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, p. 567.) 

In the Webster home the arrival of the annual 
almanac, with its quotations of poetry and prose, its 
jokes, superstitions and valuable information all jum- 
bled together, was in those days a great event and 
supplied the place of our newspapers and magazines. 
It had hardly arrived in the house before Daniel and his 
brother Ezekiel had all the poetry and anecdotes by 
heart. ^^ It was, no doubt, all good discipline and a 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, p. 578. 

45 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

great help in the end. But it amounted to nothing at 
Exeter, where Daniel was put at once into grammar 
and arithmetic, amidst strange surroundings, well- 
dressed boys, and manners and customs that bewildered 
him. " I scarcely," he says, " remained master of my 
senses." 

He really got on very well in his studies, but from 
oversensitiveness was hardly conscious of it and was in- 
clined not to come back for another term, had not the 
usher kindly urged it and told him that he was to be 
promoted into the next class. Strange to say, he was 
good in all his studies except declamation. The boy 
who a few years afterwards became famous for his 
supreme confidence before an audience, was so bashful 
at school that he could not utter a word from the 
platform. 

" The kind and excellent Buckminster sought especially 
to persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation like 
other boys, but I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit 
to memory, and recite and rehearse in my own room over 
and over again, yet, when the day came, when the school col- 
lected to hear declamations, when my name was called, and 
I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from 
it. Sometimes the instructors frowned, sometimes they smiled. 
Mr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated, most win- 
ningly, that I would venture, but I could never command suffi- 
cient resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home 
and wept bitter tears of mortification." (Autobiography, Cor- | 
respondence, vol. i, p. 9.) 

It was no doubt the remains of his delicate health 1 
and the intense sensitiveness that so often accompanies 
youthfulness in a high-strung, intelligent animal. He 
remained only about two terms, or nine months alto- 
gether, at Exeter, when his father took him home, 
and he taught school, it is said, for a few weeks near 
his father's on Searle, or Meeting House Hill, in a room 
in the home of William Webster, his uncle.^® How 

"Dearborn. History of Salisbury, N. H., p. 157; Lyman, 
Memorials of Webster, vol. i. pp. 211, 212. 

46 



4 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

many prominent New Englanders have taken a fling 
at teaching school in their youth. In this instance, 
however, it did not last long ; for he soon went to school 
himself to the Rev. Samuel Wood in the neighboring 
town of Boscawen. On the drive of six miles to Bos- 
cawen to live at the home of Dr. Wood, Daniel's father 
announced to him that he intended to give him an edu- 
cation at Dartmouth College. 

" I remember the very hill which we were ascending, 
through deep snows, in a New England sleigh, when my father 
made known this purpose to me. I could not speak. How 
could he, I thought, with so large a family, and in such narrow 
circumstances, think of incurring so great an expense for me? 
A warm glow ran all over me, and I laid my head on my 
father's shoulder and wept." (Works, Edition 1851, vol. i, 

p. XXV.) 

A college education has always, in New England, 
been a wonderful thing, even in modern times ; and in 
Webster's day it seemed to open up the whole world; 
there was nothing else quite equal to it. Dr. Wood had 
apparently been chosen as a quicker and less expensive 
road than Exeter, to hurry young Daniel to the New 
England Mecca. But the farm had to be mortgaged 
to furnish the means. It was an old-time instance of 
what we now call " cramming " for an entrance ex- 
amination. But Webster seems to have gained some 
culture and pleasure from it. 

" Mr. Wood put me upon Virgil and Tully, and I conceived 
a pleasure in the study of them, especially the latter, which 
rendered application no longer a task. With what vehemence 
did I denounce Catiline ! With what earnestness struggle 
for Milo! In the spring I began the Greek grammar, and at 
mid-summer Mr. Wood said to me : 'I expected to keep you 
till next year, but I am tired of you, and I shall put you into 
college next month.' And so indeed he did; but it was a 
mere breaking in ; I was indeed miserably prepared both in 
Latin and Greek; but Mr. Wood accomplished his purpose, 
and I entered Dartmouth College as a freshman August, 1797." 
(Autobiography, Correspondence, vol. i, p. 10.) 

47 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

So he was in the rigid old classical course, which 
so many eminent men of our race have been inspired 
by; or have survived, as some are now disposed to 
think. He travelled to Hanover, the college town of 
Dartmouth, on horseback, carrying his feather-bed and 
bedding, his clothes, books and provisions for the jour- 
ney on his horse. Was it not after all a good whole- 
some way? It was the old method of travel in New 
Hampshire, when wagons were few and expensive. A 
man, wife and child with provisions were frequently 
seen all on the same horse. The early settlers had 
advanced into the wilderness in that way. It is said 
that when Daniel reached Hanover he turned his horse 
out to pasture and had him to ride home at the end of 
the term in November.^^ 

He was fifteen, which is four years younger than 
the average college entrance in our days. He became, 
in the end, a rather good Latin scholar, as things go in 
America, where the classics have never been taken quite 
as seriously as in England. He had a natural taste 
for the oratorical dignity of the Roman language. But 
in Greek his attainments were much less. 

He continued to be an omnivorous general reader, 
a reading animal, like Lord Macaulay. He had found 
a copy of Don Quixote in the Boscawen library. " I 
began to read it," he says, " and it is literally true, that 
I never closed my eyes until I had finished it. Nor 
did I lay it down, so great was the power of that 
extraordinars^ book on my imagination." It must have 
been soon after this that he began to familiarize him- 
self with all English literature, reading much of it, 
no doubt, again and again and committing great parts 
of it to memory without much effort ; for the language 
and sentiments of the best authors of the language, 
especially Milton and Shakespeare, became a part of 
his being. " They sprang into his discourse," says his 



Dearborn, History of Salisbury, p. 416. 

48 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

literary executor and biographer, Mr. Curtis, " some- 
times in unbidden and unconscious quotation, and some- 
times with a purposed use of riches which he had stored 
in one of the most retentive memories ever possessed 
by man." 

There was a rule of the college, we are told, that 
" No scholar shall speak diminutively of the practice 
of labor, under penalty of being obliged to perform that 
which he endeavored to discredit." ^^ Yet, in spite of 
this and his heavy and exhaustive labors for a long life- 
time at the bar, in the Senate and as Secretary of State, 
in spite of his early rising and his energy in farming, 
fishing and shooting, many of Daniel's biographers in- 
sist that he was an indolent man. It is rather curious 
that this charge should have been so persistently con- 
tinued ; and it probably originated in Webster's entire 
freedom from nervousness and from the bragging about 
work and the afifectation of hustle and haste which our 
people would understand the ridiculousness of if they 
could once stand off and see themselves. He was 
noticeably deliberate, even solemn, about everything; 
imperturbable on all occasions ; with a thoughtful, 
dreamy look when not in action ; and when he rested 
he really rested and relaxed completely. 

There was no printed description of the college 
course as there is now, probably for the very good 
reason that it was so simple and well known that there 
was no necessity for printing it. In 1802, the year 
after Webster graduated, a broadside was issued and 
continued for several years ; but these contain nothing 
like a modern description of the course ; they give only 
the names of the students and of the faculty. For 
1802 the President, John Wheelock, was Professor of 
Ecclesiastical History ; B. W. Woodward was Profes- 
sor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy ; John Smith 
was Professor of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other 

" Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, 1901, p. 277. 
4 49 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Oriental Languages; and Nathan Smith was Professor 
of Chemistry and Medicine. Besides these, there were 
three tutors, as they were called, possibly a relic of the 
system at the English universities. These tutors appa- 
rently filled up gaps in the courses, supplying what the 
professors left untouched. Professor Woodward was 
also a trustee and treasurer of the college, judge of the 
county court, and in many respects it is said, the best 
of the professors. That was all there was of the col- 
lege, its courses and faculty, and one may draw his 
own conclusions and compare the course with the many 
pages of a modern one that is considered absolutely 
necessary to produce the modern paragon of youthful 
excellence. ^^ 

There was a college society, the United Fraternity, 
for essays and debates. It was like the similar societies 
in other New England colleges which have developed 
many an extemporaneous speaker besides Daniel. It 
must be remembered that these boys graduated from 
this now much ridiculed old curriculum at nineteen, the 
average age now of entering; and yet when we read 
the letters of Daniel and his friends in the first years 
after graduation, collected in his works, they seem in 
ability to use the English language by no means inferior 
to the compositions of the distinguished gentlemen of 
modern education who celebrated the Webster Centen- 
nial at Dartmouth in 1901. 

In the spring of his Sophomore year, when Daniel 
returned home for the vacation in May, it was resolved 
that his elder brother, Ezekiel, should be sent to school 
and college. The farm was already mortgaged for 
Daniel's education, but the mother and sisters seem 
to have had no hesitation in assenting to another col- 
lege education which would sweep away all the accumu- 
lated property of the family and leave them dependent 
in the end on the earnings of Ezekiel and Daniel. So 

" Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, p. 26. 

SO 




( 



tp 



li I; sTesj Jt? 








f 

"v-f. 



-^ 



^ 



.55^. 



*^B c or y il^ic fui o r. r fiinf a if r. -.'^ 



Xl(_K-NOi< S SKETCH OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE I.N l8oj 



ORIGIN AND EDUCATION 

Ezekiel, too, joined the New England aristocracy of 
education. He was of dark hair and complexion like 
the father and Daniel ; very handsome ; and famous all 
his life in New Hampshire for his good looks. His 
ability was of the solid, conservative order, equal, as 
some supposed, to Daniel's, and he became a prominent 
citizen of New Hampshire, an important man in poli- 
tics, a member for many years of one or the other 
branch of the Legislature, and a much sought legal 
adviser. But he had, it seems, none of the brilliancy 
or quickness of apprehension of his distinguished 
brother, and died suddenly while speaking in the court- 
room at Concord, at the age of forty-nine. 

Daniel was now earning a little money by helping to 
edit in the town a small weekly paper, The Dartmouth 
Gazette, and teaching school in vacation time. It was 
the familiar instance, which those of us who have been 
educated in New England have often seen, of a boy 
working his way through college. There was nothing 
particularly wonderful about it in Webster's case, nor 
was the hardship excessive. Such boys have their 
pleasures in life ; possibly more pleasures than their 
supposed betters. In fact, their thrifty, economical 
struggle, is in itself a pleasure, and in itself an educa- 
tion of no small value. Daniel at times had money 
enough to help Ezekiel, and before long Ezekiel, in his 
turn, could help Daniel. 

Many efiforts have been made to collect from Daniel's 
contemporaries the sort of boy he was in college. But 
most of these reminiscences, having been written after 
he became famous, are from that point of view, and 
mere platitudes of excellence. " All his exercises," we 
are told, " in his whole collegiate course improved in 
excellence as time advanced." He always went to 
church and never smiled in church. He was dignified, 
constant, well prepared, industrious ; he even knew more 
than his teachers ; he was popular with his companions 
and " instructive to them in conversation " ; he was, 

SI 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER ^ 

" pleasant without ostentation ; " it was impossible to 
think of an impropriety of conduct in connection with 
his name. Good Heavens, what a little wonder he 
must have been ! 

Fortunately, however, his room-mate Loveland, who 
lived to a great age, was caught in a hay-field one sum- 
mer day, and sitting down close to God and nature, he 
described his old friend, Black Dan, in language which 
we can understand. He was ambitious, he said, took 
every opportunity to make himself conspicuous, " was 
rather bombastic and always ready for a speech." He 
was " not very popular with his class, owing to his be- 
ing so independent and assuming." He " would ap- 
pear rather stuffy if things did not go to suit him," and 
on one such occasion in a college debate got up and left 
the room. " Dan was rough and awkward, very decid- 
edly, and I sometimes doubted whether he would 
succeed in life on that account." There was " some- 
thing rather assuming and pompous in his bearing as 
well as in his style." But there was no doubt of his 
natural ability ; his companions all recognized that he 
was very quick, ready at public speaking, and he " ob- 
served things remarkably and was quick to see their 
bearings." He read a great deal and was a " good, 
though not a very accurate, scholar." '** 

He used to go home with Loveland sometimes on 
Saturdays to hunt, and was a bad shot. He would 
put his feet on the fine soapstone round the fireplace 
so carelessly that Loveland's grandmother said he must 
not bring that boy home any more if he was going to 
scratch her Orford soapstone. Loveland appears to 
have taken the Abolitionist point of view and disap- 
proved of Webster's political course; but no doubt he 
gives us a true glimpse of Black Dan. He was so dark 
that when he first arrived at Dartmouth someone 
thought he was an Indian coming to the Moor Charity 
School. 

^ Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, p. 42. 

52 



II 

METHODS AND CHARACTER OF HIS ELOQUENCE 

Towards the end of his college course Daniel's 
natural talent for public speaking began to show itself 
so conspicuously that the citizens of Hanover, the 
college town of Dartmouth, asked him to deliver the 
oration for the Fourth of July, 1800. He was then 
only eighteen years old and his oration, as a whole, 
seems even now a good one for a boy of that age, but, 
of course, is a boyish imitation of the bad taste of the 
time. 

" Scattered in detachments,"' he says of the early colo- 
nists, " along a coast immensely extensive, at a remove of more 
than three thousand miles from their friends on the eastern 
continent, they were exposed to all those evils and endured 
all those difficulties to which human nature seems liable. Des- 
titute of convenient habitations, the inclemencies of the seasons 
attacked them, the midnight beasts of prey prowled terribly 
around them, and the more portentous yell of savage fury 
incessantly assailed them." (Works, National Edition, vol. xv, 
p. 476.) 

The first sentence of the above is well enough ; but 
in the last sentence he is verging towards the extrava- 
gant tone of the day. A little farther on he describes 
the Revolution ; " and America," he says, " manfully 
springing from the torturing fangs of the British Lion, 
now rises majestic in the pride of her sovereignty and 
bids her eagle elevate his wings." That was a trifle 
splurgy ; and there was more about the Mississippi and 
the Alleghanies, and the manifest inferiority of Europe, 
which, coming from a boy, was right enough, and one 
would naturally applaud. Our own boys graduating 
at twenty-three with all the advantages of a modern 
curriculum are not much better than this junior of 
eighteen. 

S3 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

It has sometimes been thought that such extracts 
as these had better not be published, because they might 
detract from the fame to which the great orator after- 
wards attained. He himself had a half humorous feel- 
ing of this sort ; and when Mr. Ticknor once reminded 
him at a dinner party that he had a printed copy of an 
oration Webster had delivered when a senior on the 
death of a classmate, Webster turned sternly towards 
him and said : 

" Have you ? I thought till lately that as only a few copies 
of it were printed, they must all have been destroyed long ago ; 
but the other day Bean, who was in college with me, told 
me he had one. It flashed through my mind that it must have 
been the last copy in the world, and that if he had it in his 
pocket it would be worth while to kill him to destroy it from 
the face of the earth. So I recommend you not to bring your 
copy where I am." (Curtis, vol. i, p. 40, note.) 

That funeral oration has been found and is now 
included in the National Edition of his Works. It is 
certainly a dreadful piece of artificial splurginess, from 
which Webster in later life very naturally shrank. 
But he was by no means at his best in funeral orations ; 
and the one he delivered many years afterwards over 
his old friend Judge Story, reminds us in places very 
unpleasantly of the college performance. His reputa- 
tion, however, is safe enough, and if there is any use 
at all in a biography, it should show his growth from 
mediocrity to distinction. He himself detested the bad 
taste of his early performances, and in his autobiogra- 
phy frankly says that he had not then learned the true 
art of expression. Without directly blaming his alma 
mater he gives us to understand that rhetoric was very 
badly taught ; for he says his error was one " into 
which the Ars Rhetorica, as it is usually taught, may 
easily lead stronger heads than mine." 

The teaching in oratory was defective in all Ameri- 
can colleges and the popular taste was as bad if not 
worse. The development of our love of spread eagle 

54 



ELOQUENCE 

eloquence in that century until it reached a degree of 
extravagance, bombast and turgidity never known be- 
fore in the world, is a curious history. In colonial 
times we find little or none of it. It is sometimes sup- 
posed to have been started by a similar bombastic ora- 
tory among the leaders of the French Revolution; or 
it may have begun in our own Revolution, and may 
have originated in a desire to imitate Patrick Henry's 
enthusiastic defiance, the imaginative flights of Burke, 
or the vigor and beauty of Lord Chatham. These ora- 
tors all spoke so strongly for the cause of American 
rights that our people worshipped them, and every 
generation of schoolboys recited passages from their 
speeches. But all mere imitations of great orators end 
in turgidity. They cannot be imitated. If they could 
they would not stand alone ; there would be hundreds 
like them. 

The high excitement of the Revolution, however, 
and the necessity for violent appeals to passion and 
patriotism, very naturally led us into this imitative 
screeching. It has invaded our life to an extraordi- 
nary degree; its influence on the masses has been enor- 
mous and injurious; they learned to worship and rely 
upon it to the verge of infatuation. In its excessive 
development by American keenness and energy it has 
been used to lead the people into cheap money crazes; 
to befog their understanding with impossible ideas and 
tawdry sentimentalism, and leave them a prey to the 
corruption of capitalists and monopolies. It has been 
used in the courts to increase and confuse litigation 
and acquit the most guilty criminals until litigation in 
America requires more judges and money to carry it 
on than in any other country in the world ; and there 
are more murders and fewer convictions for murder 
in proportion to population than anywhere else in civi- 
lization. 

It is remarkable that although Webster's youth 
came within the full influence of this degenerating craze, 

55 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

he nevertheless, of his own accord, worked himself 
out of it into the truer method. It was a hard struggle, 
he had frequent lapses ; progress was slow ; and it was 
years before he trained himself to the style of his 
best speeches. But he was always progressing; and 
the last great speech of his life was the farthest re- 
moved from the old method. The difference between 
him and others was that they remained stolidly in the 
old influence all their lives, while he was always moving 
away from it. 

He worked as hard to perfect himself in language 
as Demosthenes, who used to put pebbles in his mouth 
and try to correct his stuttering by speaking above the 
roar of the sea. " My style," Webster said, " was 
not formed without great care and earnest study of 
the best authors. I labored hard upon it, for I early 
felt the importance of expression to thought. I have 
rewritten sentence after sentence, and pondered long 
upon each alteration. For depend upon it it is with 
our thoughts as with our persons — their intrinsic value 
is mostly undervalued, unless outwardly expressed in 
an attractive garb." 

He was an untiring student of the Old Testament, 
never wearied of its poetry, and it, like Milton, un- 
doubtedly increased the vivid terseness to which his 
style sometimes attained. " Longinus," he says, " tells 
us that the most sublime passage to be found in any 
language is this, in the Bible : ' Let there be light, and 
there was light : ' the greatest effort of power in the 
tersest and fewest words — the command and the record 
one exertion of thought. So should we all aim to ex- 
press things in words." The most casual reading of 
his speeches shows this constant effort to express every- 
thing concretely; to let the words represent things and 
not abstractions or generalities; the same idea so well 
laid down in excellent old Archbishop Whateley's 
Rhetoric, a book which Webster mentions in a letter in 

56 



ELOQUENCE 

which he discourses in a very interesting way on the 
best methods of writing.^ 

Webster's mind and memory evidently worked en- 
tirely by the picture method. His knowledge was all 
pictured concretely in actual scenes, usually from nature. 
One sees this constantly in reading his speeches. He 
seems to be walking among these scenes and fields 
of his memory and picking up the information which 
he describes from its locality. He refers to this him- 
self when he says that he had no difficulty in the Reply 
to Hayne. because all that he had ever known seemed 
laid out before him. 

His sentences are usually very perfect specimens of 
construction, as anyone can test for himself, by trying 
to alter or improve some of the numerous ones quoted 
in this book. The beginning of one of them, even the 
shortest, has usually a very distinctive way of leading 
logically on to the end of itself. They are all close 
coupled; each thought connects directly with its prede- 
cessor ; there are no obscure backward references ; 
the meaning is full; and as in all perfectly formed 
sentences the meaning is not complete until the last 
word is reached. One of his sentences from the Ash- 
burton diplomatic documents may be given as a fine 
instance of close-coupled condensation of a famous 
principle in very few words : " In every regularly docu- 
mented American merchant vessel, the crew who navi- 
gate it will find their protection in the flag that is over 
them." ^ 

His choice of words, the delicate shades of meaning 
by which he would advance or enlarge a thought, making 
it clearer at every step to even ordinary minds, was no 
doubt the result of endless pains, as he himself said; 
but it was also where his genius lay. No mere talent 
or industry could attain such skill. He was very fond, 



^ Private Correspondence, vol. i, p. 463. 
^ Works, Edition 1851, vol. v, p. 146. 

57 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

his secretary says, of buying dictionaries and had an 
immense collection of them, almost all that were known. 
It may be that, like some of the English parliamentary 
orators, he kept reading these dictionaries over and over 
to increase his vocabulary and train his mind to various 
distinctions and meanings. Chatham, as we are told by 
Lord Rosebery, had read through Bailey's dictionary 
several times. 

Webster would apparently in unimportant speeches 
practice himself in this study of synonyms; and Sena- 
tor Hoar, in his autobiography, mentions an instance in 
which he saw him at the process. He would in a rather 
tiresome way use a great many words to describe one 
idea, as in giving a reason for the population of Bos- 
ton he said, "Is it not because we have here a suffi- 
cient, ample, safe, secure, convenient, commodious port, 
harbor, haven?" In an important speech these would 
have been sorted down to two or three; and in his 
highly finished speeches three or four synonyms are 
often used with most telling effect, each one advancing 
the thought by a delicate shade that captivates the 
mind. This was difficult and high art. But he had 
evidently found that nothing was more effective in 
persuading and convincing. 

The structure of his sentences and choice of words, 
as finally matured, were peculiar to himself, as were 
also his tones of voice and emphasis. The elocution- 
ists could never fully understand him. He seemed to 
" load words with fourfold their meaning and power " ; 
and he could give the simplest and humblest word a new 
forcefulness. There was a dispute as to how he empha- 
sized a very impressive sentence in the White murder 
trial, " Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake ; " 
whether the stress was on dreadful or on mistake. But 
one who had been at the trial and heard him said that 
he pronounced both words alike. 

All this was Websterian, as we now say ; unlike the 
style of anyone else, and no one can successfully imi- 

S8 



ELOQUENCE 

tate it. His methods are almost equally difficult to 
describe; although it is easy to pile up exciting adjec- 
tives about them. They are best known by examples. 
One of his most conspicuous qualities was his correct 
ear; the harmony, the musical beauty, of his sentences, 
which the reader can test for himself. They are sim- 
ply inimitable ; all the analysis in the world will not 
enable you to see exactly how he does it. He was 
skilful in the repetition of an important idea or prin- 
ciple in various forms and with abundance of illustra- 
tion, so artfully done that his hearer is unconscious of 
the repetition and is led charmed from illustration to 
illustration until the idea is driven home and he is 
convinced. This, like his use of synonyms, has been 
the method of many famous orators, and Webster found 
it peculiarly well suited to his subject matter, especially 
his constitutional arguments. But his illustrations 
were never far-fetched or curious. They were some- 
what lacking, it has been thought, in ingenuity of in- 
vention. But they were in good taste; they always 
seemed to belong to the subject ; they conformed to his 
severe, you might almost say austere, classic taste. 
His argument usually rested on only a few strong 
points. In analyzing one of his speeches you are 
' usually surprised to find how few these points are ; 
and then you begin to see how they have been driven 
home, demonstrated, burnt into the minds of his hearers. 
This may have been the reason why his notes were 
always so brief. His own final analysis of one of his 
long speeches would all be contained in a few hints 
on a small sheet of paper. 

In the latter part of his life, Parton says, he some- 
times delivered speeches which were mere empty pom- 
pousness and posing, and this, though the testimony 
of an enemy, is no doubt true. He was called upon 
to speak a great deal, and delivered an immense num- 
ber of speeches, in only some of which he could bring 
his literary ability into effective play. These he tried 

59 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to preserve in permanent form and encouraged the 
others to die. He had the fault, at times, of overwork- 
ing himself and then, of course, went stale. The mill 
merely ground on itself. He still had his actor's ability ; 
he could go through the motions ; but there was no real 
character for him to take. 

His unusual deliberateness of manner, a natural trait 
which he had even as a boy, added greatly to the 
impressiveness of his oratory. But in his old age he 
carried it to an extreme, and it became a serious fault. 
Senator Hoar, in his autobiography, and G. W. Julian, 
in his Political Recollections, both writing of about the 
year 1850, mention this fault as very pronounced, and 
his pauses between words as very long, apparently the 
result of his age and failing health. 

It has been usual to assume that his eloquence, 
though superior to anything of the sort in America, is 
not to be compared with that of the greatest orators : 
Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, and Chatham, or even 
Erskine, Fox, and Macaulay. Mr. Evarts, in his speech 
at the unveiling of the Burnham Statue in New York 
in 1876, accepted this as Webster's position in the 
world. But others have thought differently, and Web- 
ster's eloquence improves with time. Senator Lodge 
quotes Francis Lieber, a well-known political writer in 
the period before the Civil War, who compared Web- 
ster rather favorably with Demosthenes. " I read," he 
said, " a portion of my favorite speeches of Demos- 
thenes, and then read, always aloud, parts of Webster; 
then returned to the Athenian ; and Webster stood the 
test." ^ 

It would be interesting if he had told us with which 
of Webster's speeches he had made the test. One of 
Webster's strong points was his use of short sentences ; 



' The index of Lieber's " Life and Letters " does not en- 
able one to find this passage which Senator Lodge quotes 
without reference in his Life of Webster, p. 187. 

60 



ELOQUENCE 

or, if you choose, he was strongest when he used 
short sentences ; for he varied a good deal in this re- 
spect. When he was at his best, most impassioned, 
those quick, short condensations of emotion come Hke 
rifle bullets. This is particularly noticeable in the 
speech in the White murder trial ; and it is probably in 
that and similar passages that he comes nearest to the 
classic Greek. 

Comparing him with Burke we find the same lofty 
tone in each, the unmistakable tone of distinction, 
Few, if any, orators except Chatham have been able 
to equal them in this ; and perhaps Chatham now and 
then goes beyond them. But in Burke that tone be- 
comes very monotonous and often flags. Burke's 
speeches are of prodigious length and tediousness ; and 
while the tone may be often kept up with formal cor- 
rectness, there is little or none of Webster's humor, 
powerful reasoning, or illustrations from nature to 
vary it. 

Burke is a wonderful phrase maker; but his phrase 
making is usually scholastic and indoors. Curiously 
enough, as showing what literary power these illustra- 
tions from nature have, the most frequently quoted 
passage from Burke is one of the very few in which 
he was able to draw strongly upon nature. He was 
describing the vigor of the New England colonists and 
their enterprise in navigation and whale fishing; their 
adventures among the tumbling mountains of ice and 
the frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay ; and " whilst we 
are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear 
that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar 
cold, that they are at the antipodes and engaged under 
the frozen serpent of the south. No sea but what is 
vexed with their fisheries. No climate that is not wit- 
ness to their toils ; neither the perseverance of Hol- 
land, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and 
firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this 
most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent 

6i 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to which it has been pushed by this recent people ; a 
people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle and 
not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." 

The whole passage is fine ; and the passage from 
Webster one is inclined to pit against it is the close 
of his famous description of the struggle of the Ameri- 
can colonists against the British Empire : 

" On this question of principle, while actual suffering was 
yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to which, 
for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the 
height of her glory is not to be compared ; a power which has 
dotted over the surface of the globe with her possessions and 
military posts, whose morning drum beat, following the sun 
and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one 
continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of 
England." 

A large part of Burke's fame rests on his philo- 
sophical essays, the famous one on the Sublime and 
Beautiful, his Reflections on the French Revolution, and 
numerous letters and addresses. In these are many 
instances of genius in the use of language, of the scho- 
lastic kind and of strong literary merit and profound 
thought, which have become part of the treasure of 
the world. In this field, Webster, who wrote no philo- 
sophical essays, does not compete with him. We are 
comparing the two men only as orators and parliamen- 
tary debaters. 

It was a defect in Burke that he let this philosophical 
essay habit intrude into his speeches and spoiled a large 
part of both their immediate and permanent effect. 
From certain well-known passages of " imperial fancy " 
and commanding eloquence he sinks rapidly to the com- I 
monplace. He had very little of that perfect control 
of his audience that Webster had from the beginning 
to the end of almost every speech he ever made. Burke 
was very defective with his audience. " He spoke," 
his biographer says, " with an Irish accent, with awk- 
ward action and in a harsh tone." 

62 



ELOQUENCE 

"His power over the house did not last; his thoughts were 
too deep for the greater part of the members, and were rather 
exhaustive discussions than direct contributions to debate, 
while the sustained loftiness of his style and a certain lack 
of sympathy with his audience, marred the effect of his 
oratory. His temper was naturally hasty and he was deficient 
in political tact." (Dictionary of National Biography, vol. vii, 
p. 348.) 

In all these points Webster was far his superior. 
In Burke's interminably long and wearisome speeches in 
the impeachment of Warren Hastings, in those vast 
masses of evidence of corruption, bribery, extortion and 
cruelty in India, he had numerous opportunities to dis- 
play his powers of sarcasm, but he appears to have used 
them scarcely as well and not as humorously as Web- 
ster used his more limited chances. Burke's briefest 
famous speech, one that in brevity approaches nearest to 
Webster's longest, and one that has always been put 
forward as remarkable, was on the Nabob of Arcot's 
Debts ; and it may be well to compare the opening para- 
graph of it with the opening of Webster's 7th of March 
speech in the Senate. 

"The times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distin- 
guished by extraordinary events. Habituated, as we are, to 
uncommon combinations of men and of afifairs, I believe nobody 
recollects anything more surprising than the spectacle of this 
day. The right honorable gentleman, whose conduct is now 
in question, formerly stood forth in this house, the prosecutor 
of the worthy baronet who spoke after him. He charged him 
with several grievous acts of malversation in office ; with abuses 
of a public trust of a great and heinous nature. In less than 
two years we see the situation of the parties reversed; and a 
singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way of 
returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and 
penalties, grounded on a breach of public trust, relative to 
the government of the very same part of India. If he should 
undertake a bill of that kind, he will find no difficulty in 
conducting it with a degree of skill and vigor fully equal to 
all that have been exerted against him." (Burke, Works, 
Bohn Edition of i860, vol. iii, p. 122.) 

" Mr. President : I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massa- 
chusetts man, nor as a northern man, but as an American, and 

63 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

a member of the Senate of the United States. It is fortunate 
that there is a Senate of the United States; a body not j'ct 
moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own 
dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which 
the country looks with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, 
and healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live 
in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very 
considerable dangers to our institutions and government. The 
imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the 
stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, 
to toss its billows to the skies and disclose its profoundest 
depths. I do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as 
holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat with the 
political elements ; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean 
to perform it with fidelity, not without a sense of existing 
dangers, but not without hope. I have a part to act, not for 
my own security or safety, for I am looking out for no frag- 
ment upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there 
must be, but for the good of the whole, and the preservation 
of all ; and there is that which will keep me to my duty during 
this struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear or 
shall not appear for many days. I speak to-day for the pres- 
ervation of the Union. 'Hear me for my cause.' " 

This passage from Webster is an instance of a 
quality which has been aptly called " stately pathos." 
Few orators have excelled him in it, and it was a quality 
which he and Chatham had in common. 

Erskine's fame rests on a few speeches he made as 
a barrister in some libel and treason cases, and in his 
unsuccessful defense of Thomas Paine. Good orations 
they are, in pure taste, to the point and with no strained 
ornamentation; but they lack the imagination, the wide 
range of thought, the broad appeals, and the reason- 
ing power of Webster. Erskine " never succeeded in 
the House of Commons or caught its tone." In fact, 
he is described as breaking down in a speech in Parlia- 
ment, unable to go on, and for years after seldom 
speaking.^ 

With Lord Chatham, the great commoner, the 

* Dictionary of Nat. Biography, vol. xvii, p. 438. 

64 



I 



ELOQUENCE 

statesman and Parliamentary leader, who conducted 
the war that wrested Canada from France, and laid 
the foundations of the modern British empire, the com- 
parison is quite different. The most eminent figure in 
English politics in the eighteenth century, he has been 
described as " the first Englishman of his time and 
he had made England the first country of the world." 
He has usually been ranked with the greatest orators 
of all times. He was all orator. Tall, imposing; in 
grace and dignity of gesture not inferior to Garrick ; 
his voice full and clear ; " his lowest whisper was dis- 
tinctly heard; his middle tones were sweet, rich and 
beautifully varied ; when he elevated his voice to its 
highest pitch, the house was completely filled with the 
volume of the sound." Friends and foes alike listened 
in breathless silence to him. No one could say that he 
failed to hold the attention of his hearers. Indeed, 
according to all accounts we have of him, he was such 
a complete orator that one is almost inclined to ques- 
tion whether Burke can be called an orator at all. He 
may have been merely a man of literary genius who 
made speeches in Parliament. 

The few of Chatham's speeches that have been pre- 
served are not long, and are much superior to Burke's 
in clearness of diction and sustained interest. As Lord 
Rosebery has recently shown, it is doubtful if we have 
any of Chatham's speeches that have not been doctored 
and rewritten for him. There was no reporting in his 
early, and very inferior reporting in his later days. 
But assuming that those we have are reasonably like the 
originals, it must be confessed that they are models of 
literar}^ form and beautiful English ; and the remarkable 
part about them is, that their merits are so evenly main- 
tained throughout ever>' part of what he says. His con- 
tinuous vivid clearness and continuous elevation above 
the commonplace would be very difficult to equal. 
Take, for example, one of his ordinary, seldom quoted 
passages : 

S 65 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

" A great deal has been said without doors of the power, 
of the strength, of America. It is a topic that ought to be 
cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, 
the force of this country can crush America to atoms. I know 
the valor of your troops. I know the skill of your officers. 
There is not a company of foot that has served in America 
out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge 
and experience to make a governor of a colony there. But 
on this ground, on the stamp act, which so many here will 
think a crying injustice, I am one who will lift up my hands 
against it. In such a cause your success would be hazardous. 
America, if she fell, would fall like a strong man; she would 
embrace the pillars of the State and pull down the Constitution 
along with her." (Speech on the Right to Tax America, Jan. 
i6, 1776.) 

That passage shows the aptitude of language he 
could usually maintain. Then there is the passage 
so well known in this country : " But, my lords, who is 
the man that, in addition to these disgraces and mis- 
chiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate 
to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the 
savage? To call into civilized alliance the wild and 
inhuman savage of the woods ; to delegate to the merci- 
less Indian the defense of disputed rights, and to wage 
the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren ? " 

Those passages the reader can compare with the 
passages quoted from Webster, and decide for himself 
the ability of the two men as masters of the sentences. 
The first few pages of Webster's speech in the White 
murder trial, the description of the murder and the con- 
sciousness of guilt that haunted the assassin have prob- 
ably never been surpassed, and raise Webster far above 
both Erskine and Fox. Schoolboys used to recite them, 
and possibly still recite them. Too long to quote in 
full, a short quotation to recall them to mind may be 
made immediately following the part where Webster 
described the assassin as believing that his secret was 
safe : 

"Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a 
secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God 

66 



ELOQUENCE 

has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, 
and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which pierces 
through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor 
of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, 
even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that ' murder will 
out.' True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth 
so govern things, that those who break tlie great law of 
heaven by shedding man's blood seldom succeed in avoiding 
discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much attention 
as this, discovery must com.e, and will come, sooner or later. 
A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every 
thing, every circumstance connected with the time and place ; 
a thousand ears catch every whisper ; a thousand excited minds 
intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and 
ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of dis- 
covery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. 
It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse 
of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty 
possession and knows not what to do with it. The human 
heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. 
It finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not 
acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and 
it can ask no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or 
earth." 

In vividness and immortal interest Webster can 
often equal Chatham at his best. In continuous main- 
tenance of such a style Chatham may be superior. But 
if Chatham had dealt with all the dry topics Webster 
handled, and all his speeches had been preserved as 
delivered, the difference between the two men in this 
respect might be less marked. Which of them excelled 
in voice and manner would now be impossible to deter- 
mine. Webster made few gestures ; but, if we can be- 
lieve his contemporaries, his voice and appearance, his 
enunciation of words, his transfusion of his own char- 
acter, emotion, and intellect into his tones and manner 
always chanr.ed and fascinated and carried away his 
hearers. William Plumer, in his reminiscences, de- 
scribes the effect of Webster's manner even in the de- 
livery of a few ordinary after-dinner remarks, which 
contained nothing of importance. Five minutes after 
the other speakers had resumed their seats, he said, no 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

one remembered what they had said ; while every word 
of Webster's had burnt itself into the hearer's memory. 

The descriptions of the crowds, composed often 
largely of ladies, who would go to hear Webster deliver 
a dry legal argument merely for the sake of his fas- 
cinating voice and the tremendous impression of power 
in his manner, and Ticknor's descriptions of the effect 
of his Plymouth and other orations are somewhat simi- 
lar to the descriptions of Chatham's eloquence, which 
those who heard it said was the " strength of thunder 
and the splendor of lightning," that " his eye and coun- 
tenance alone would have conveyed his feelings to the 
deaf." Like Webster, his eyes were, it seems, his 
most remarkable and striking feature.^ 

In one respect Webster certainly excelled. Of 
Chatham it is said that " little sustained or close argu- 
ment figured in his speeches." He appealed more to 
strong passions and drew his strength from the lofti- 
ness of his position.^ But the most striking quality 
of Webster was his close reasoning. He dealt with 
subjects that required it. As a reasoner, as an orator 
who could make closely reasoned constitutional law so 
eloquent and give it such literary power that it was 
transformed from logic into sentiment which has bound 
a nation together and for which men laid down their 
lives, Webster would seem to stand above both Chatham 
and Burke. No one else has ever by such reasoned 
eloquence, such reasoning literary power, opened so 
wide the minds of both judges, statesmen and people. 
It was a domain all his own ; and a domain that could 
be conquered only by an extraordinary combination 
of intellect and emotion. 

Webster developed rather slowly, but he kept on 
developing all his life, which seems to indicate the force- 
fulness of his origin. He was not in his prime until 



'Rosebery, Life of Chatham, pp. 448~458. 

* Dictionary of National Biograph}', vol. xlv, p. 365. 

68 



ELOQUENCE 

he was nearly fifty years old, when he delivered the 
famous reply to Hayne ; and his 7th of March speech, 
so vastly unpopular among the free-soilers, but, as a 
mere speech, one of the best of his life, was delivered 
when he was sixty-eight. 

His brothers and sisters had none of his marvellous 
power. He stood alone among them. In the animal 
kingdom naturalists used to give to such sudden de- 
velopment in a species the name sport, and in modem 
times the Darwinians call it a mutation. It is impossible 
to account for such appearances, as it is impossible 
to account for Webster's contemporary genius. Napo- 
leon, the most extraordinary mutation in human intel- 
lect and physical endurance that has ever been known. 
Perhaps the cross of the blonde, slender Webster type 
of outdoor farming people with the dark complexioned, 
heavily built, indoors, intellectual, learned Bachilder 
strain, was a lucky out-cross — what the animal breeders 
call a " nick." Such a combination of opposites will 
sometimes give us a hunting dog or a horse " unmatched 
for courage, breath and speed," as Sir Walter Scott 
would say. But even this profound explanation is 
merely another way of saying, I do not know. 



69 



Ill 

EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS AND RELATIONS WITH 
JUDGE STORY 

Graduating from Dartmouth in August, 1801, Web- 
ster began the study of the law in the office of Thomas 
W. Thompson, " next door," he says, " to my father's 
house." It was the adjoining farm really, the houses 
being placed in New England fashion, as near together 
as possible, along the road. Thompson was a friend 
of Webster's father, a comparatively young lawyer, but 
with a good country practice of small cases. He was 
also postmaster, receiving from the office eight or ten 
dollars a year; and he afterwards became one of the 
trustees of Dartm^outh College, and a Senator at Wash- 
ington from 1814 to 1817.^ 

Webster was not at this time strongly drawn to 
the law as a profession, but "precipitated himself into 
it," as he says, at his father's advice and request. His 
studies began, as was not uncommon at that time and 
for long afterwards, with the reading of books on 
international law, particularly the old author, Vattel on 
the Law of Nations. International law is not law at 
all, in the lawyer's sense, because it cannot be brought 
to the test of a decision by a court or an execution by 
the sheriff. But it was considered an excellent intro- 
ductory and broadening reading for a law student, giv- 
ing him general conceptions of law and moral obligation 
as well as valuable historical information. Webster read 
Robertson's Charles V for the sake of its account of 
feudalism and the old legal ideas of Europe ; and then 
he took up Blackstone's commentaries, the real techni- 
cality of the old English common law, written in the 

'Dearborn, History of Salisbury, p. 156. 

70 




HOUSE IN' WHICH WEBSTER LIVED AT DARTMOUTH, 
NORTH MAIN STREET 




HOUSE IN WHICH WEBSTER LIVED AT DARTMOUTH, 
SOUTH MAIN STREET 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

richest, most comprehensive and even noblest style in 
which dry law was ever expressed, a style that always 
seems to smack of the bottle of port wine the old judge 
is said to have had beside him every evening- when he 
wrote.- 

Webster in maturer years loved to re-read Black- 
stone. But the famous old Coke on Littleton, at which 
he was put in Thompson's office, disgusted him and 
almost drove him to despair of ever becoming a lawyer. 
He could hardly understand a quarter of its abstract 
and subtle doctrines, and ever afterwards condemned its 
use for students as perfect folly. " Why disgust and 
discourage a boy," he says, " by telling him that he 
must break into his profession through such a wall as 
that ? " He abandoned Coke and read instead Espi- 
nasse's Law of Nisi Prius, which he found quite intelli- 
gible ; and from that he passed on to the practical work 
of writs and processes. 

" I have made some few writs, and am now about to bring 
an action of trespass for breaking a violin. The owner of the 
violin was at a husking where 

' His jarring concord and discord dulcet ' 
made the girls skip over the husks as nimbly as Virgil's 
Camilla over the tops of the corn, till an old surly creature 
caught his fiddle and broke it against the wall. For the sake 
of having plump witnesses, the plaintiff will summon all the 
girls to attend the trial at Concord." (Private Correspondence, 
vol. i, p. 96.) 

He had not yet reached the grave responsibilities. 
He had a dog named Leo, with which between writs 
that autumn he hunted ruffed grouse (partridges, he 
called them) and squirrels. He shot the wild pigeons 
that were so numerous in those times ; fished in the 
Merrimac; and had three or four sweethearts, no doubt, 
although he does not expressly say so. His letters, 
however, are full of comments on the subject, teasing 

^ Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 100, 14 ; Curtis, Life of Web- 
ster, vol. i, p. 48. 

71 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

his friends about their flames, and protesting that he 
himself had retired from all tliat sort of thing. 

These letters of his early law days, most of them to 
his former classmates, with some from them, have very 
fortunately been preserved and give a pleasing picture. 
They are written by young men who graduated four 
years sooner than boys do now, and who were still under 
the remaining influences of the old Colonial period. 
They give us glimpses, and valuable ones, of the New- 
Hampshire and New England life of those days. 

Webster's own letters are those of a well-educated, 
happv-natured young fellow, whose narrow means were 
no bar to his fun. He seems to have got about the coun- 
try a great deal, visiting and skylarking with those of 
his own age. 

" It is not long since I was at Concord, we had fine times, 
singing, dancing and skipping. There were a thousand in- 
quiries about you. Really, Weld, you must not let the girls 

break their hearts for you. I asked Miss if she wanted to 

see Mr. Fuller very much. She said that— that — that — that the 
Lord knows what she did say." (Private Correspondence, 
vol. i, p. 126.) 

Like a true New England boy, he revisited his 
college. He was always inclined to drift back. He 
wandered over among the people along the Connec- 
ticut River and was delighted with their manners and 
ideas. Old English expressions, like lackaday, fre- 
quently occur in his letters. He often wrote verses 
on more or less humorous events among his friends. 
One whole letter is in verse in Pope's style. On an- 
other occasion one of the girls, they were forever talk- 
ing about, cut her foot on some sharp tool, and Web- 
ster's muse, as he says, immediately " broke out like 
an Irish rebellion." 

" Rust seize the axe, the hoe or spade. 
Which in your foot this gash has made ! 
Which cut thro' kid and silk and skin, 
To spill the blood that was within ; 
By which you're forced to creep and crawl, 
Nor frisk and frolic at the ball ! 

72 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

" But Clara, Clara ! were thy heart 
As tender as thy pedal part ; 
From thy sweet lips did love but ilow, 
Swift as blood gushes from thy toe, 
So many beaus would not complain 
That all their bows and vows are vain ! " 

(Private Correspondence, vol. i, p. 153.) 

He was living- the right sort of hfe for his age. 
The collection of his letters in two volumes, beginning 
with his boyish effusions and going on down through 
his serious tasks of law, politics, and diplomacy, is in 
many respects the best biography of him that will ever 
be written. As we read along we find the- boyishness 
slowly changing; and in 1806 or 1807, when he was 
about twenty-four, striking sentences of the true Web- 
sterian ring begin to appear. In the early letters one 
is inclined to skip or read quickly a good deal of the 
prattle ; but as he matures it becomes impossible to skip. 
Every sentence is dwelt upon ; and the conviction is 
forced upon one that these letters are really unusual 
instances of capacity in the use of language and that 
their literary value has never been fully recognized. 

Webster, although himself a part of the famous 
literary upheaval in New England, was never taken into 
what became known as the Mutual Admiration Society. 
He was older than most of them ; had started in other 
companionship; and at the time they began to flourish 
he had mortally offended them by his willingness to com- 
promise with the slave power in order to save the Union. 
So his productions were never " insured in the Mutual." 
The Mutual never felt in duty bound to enlarge, amplify 
and insist on his most trifling merits.^ 

Happy and genial though he was in his student days, 
he had nearly been prevented from studying law by 
the difficulty his father found in keeping Ezekiel at 
college. Some money, however, was borrowed from 

^ In a reading room in Boston, on the margin of a review 
by Lowell of something Longfellow had written, or vice versa, 
some one of the unregenerate wrote " Insured in the Mutual." 

73 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Governor Gilman, a stanch Federalist in politics, and 
this tided over the difficulty. In three or four months 
the difficulty arose again, and Daniel gave up his law 
studies and in January secured a position as the teacher 
of a small academy in the village of Fryeburg. It was 
a new wilderness settlement in the same foothills of 
the White Mountains, but to the eastward and just 
across the border of New Hampshire in what is now 
Maine, and was then part of Massachusetts. Buying 
a horse for twenty-five dollars, and with books and 
clothes in the saddle bags, he started to earn the first 
money of his life, a salary of three hundred and fifty 
dollars a year ; but half of it, it seems, or six months' 
service would be enough to help Ezekiel. He boarded 
with the recorder of deeds of the new county, who 
employed him in the evenings transcribing deeds at the 
rate of one shilling six pence. 

" Of a long winter's evening," he says, " I could copy two 
deeds ; and that was half a dollar. Four evenings in a week 
earned two dollars ; and two dollars in a week paid my board. 
This appeared to me to be a very thriving condition, for my 
three hundred and fifteen dollars' salary as schoolmaster was 
thus going on without abatement or deduction for vivers." 
(Autobiography.) 

Through the worst winter months he v/orked and in 
spring came what he considered the reward. 

"In May of this year (1802), having a week's vacation, 
I took my quarter's salary, mounted a horse, went straight 
over all the hills to Hanover, and had the pleasure of puttinp; 
these, the first earnings of my life, into my brother's hands 
for his college expenses. Having enjoyed this sincere and 
high pleasure, I hied me back again to my school and my 
copying of deeds." (Autobiography.) 

He had no complaints to make or boasting about the 
sacrifice, so we shall make none for him. It is interest- 
ing to note, however, that on this visit to Hanover he 
met for the first time George Ticknor, then about to 
enter Dartmouth, and afterwards Webster's close friend 
and literary executor. In his " Recollections " Ticknor 

74 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

makes the important statement that Webster at this 
time " was thin, and had not the appearance of being 
a strong man." 

He was then past twenty ; but the childhood dehcacy 
was evidently not yet outgrown, which was another evi- 
dence of the slowness of his growth towards the remark- 
able vigor he finally attained. Another contemporary 
describes him at this time as without the striking expres- 
sion of his later years. " His cheeks were thin, and 
his cheekbones high. There was nothing specially 
noticeable about him then, except his full, steady, large, 
and searching eyes." He afterwards described himself 
at that time as " long, slender, pale and all eyes ; indeed, 
I went by the name of all eyes the country round." 
There were not a few who thought him inclined to con- 
sumption.* 

He had been out of college only about a year when 
Ticknor describes his visit of two or three days in his 
old haunts and with old friends still in college. They 
received him with the welcome only boys can bestow; 
and every college man knows the delight, the eagerness 
and the jokes of these reunions. No one probably en- 
joyed them more than Webster. He was always to 
the end of his life a thorough college man. He kept 
up his Latin, regretted that he had not learned more 
Greek, and continued the habit of mental cultivation. 
He never forgot the delights of American college life, 
its ideals, and enthusiasms ; its half seclusion from the 
world ; its exclusiveness, or, if you please, its aristocratic 
tinge ; he believed in it and lived it all. 

Out of school hours he was not, it seems, the solemn 
personage some teachers are supposed to be. 

Fryeburg, March 3, 1802. 
My Friend. — This is one of those happy mornings when 
" spring looks from the lucid chambers of the south." Though 
we have snow in abundance, yet the air is charmingly serene, 



*Lanman, Private Life of Webster, pp. 31, 89. 

75 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and Pequawket puts on more pleasantness than I have before 
seen it clad in. If I had an engagement of love, I should cer- 
tainly arrange my thoughts of this morning for a romantic 
epistle. How fine it would be to point out a resemblance 
between the clear lustre of the sun and a pair of bright eyes ! 
The snow, too, instead of embarrassing, would much assist 
me. What fitter emblem of virgin purity? A pair of pigeons 
that enjoy the morning on the ridge of the barn might be 
easily transformed into turtle-doves breathing reciprocal vows. 
How shall I resist this temptation to be a little romantic and 
poetical ? " Loves " and " doves " this moment chime in my 
fancy in spite of me. " Sparkling eyes " and "' mournful sighs," 
" constancy of soul," " like needle to the pole," and a whole 
retinue of poetic and languishing expressions are now ready to 
pour from my pen. What a pity that all this inspiration should 
be lost for want of an object! But so it is. Nobody will 
hear my pretty ditties, unless, forsooth, I should turn gravely 
about and declaim them to the maid who is setting the table 
for breakfast ; but what an indelicate idea ! a maid to be the 
subject of a ballad? 'twere blasphemy. Apollo would never 
forgive me. Well, then, I will turn about, and drink down 
all my poetry with my coffee. " Yes, ma'am, I will come to 
breakfast." (Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 4.) 

At Fryeburg he had found a circulating hbrar}-- 
and when not teaching he read, as he tells us, Adams's 
" Defence of the American Constitutions," Mosheim's 
" Ecclesiastical History," Goldsmith's " History of 
England," Blackstone's " Commentaries," and Ames's 
celebrated speech on the British Treaty. The last he 
committed to memory, as was his constant practice, 
with any eloquence or poetry that struck his fancy. He 
read also at this time, as his friend McGaw tells us, the 
" Spectator," the *' Tatler," and all of Pope's poetical 
works. This was a good deal of the literature of that 
day. Our modern literature had not then quite begun. 
Sir Walter Scott was on the eve of fame. His Lay 
of the Last Minstrel appeared in 1805, and in 1814, 
when looking for some fishing tackle, he found his 
almost forgotten manuscript of Waverley and pub- 
lished it. 

One more quotation from Webster's letters to show 

76 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

the times and his hfe. He had gone away from Frye- 
burg for a few days to see his brother sick at college, 
also to see a young man who was dying and engaged to 
be married to his eldest sister, and he was returning on 
horseback. 

" I accidentally fell in with one of my scholars, on his 
return to the academy. He was mounted on the ugliest horse 
I ever saw or heard of, except Sancho Panza's pacer. As I 
had two horses with me I proposed to him to ride one of 
them, and tie his bag fast to his Bucephalus; he did accord- 
ingly, and turned him forward, where her odd appearance, in- 
describable gait, and frequent stumblings afforded us constant 
amusement. At length we approached the Saco River, a very 
wide, deep and rapid stream, when this satire on the animal 
creation, as if to revenge herself on us for our sarcasms, 
plunged into the river, then very high by the freshet, and was 
wafted down the current like a bag of oats ! I could scarcely 
sit on my horse for laughter. I am apt to laugh at the 
vexations of my friends. The fellow, who was of my own 
age, and my room-mate, half checked the current by oaths as 
big as lobsters, and the old Rosinante, who was all the while 
much at her ease, floated up among the willows far below on 
the opposite shore." (Correspondence, vol. i, p. 109.) 

He was offered an increased salary as teacher at 
Fryeburg, five or six hundred dollars a year, a house 
to live in, a piece of land to- cultivate, and the proba- 
bility of the clerkship of the Court of Common Pleas. 
It was a large and tempting offer, under all the circum- 
stances. But he refused it principally because his 
father and friends wished him to stick to the law. So 
he returned to Mr. Thompson's office in September, 
where he remained until February or March, 1804; and 
he has described for us his life. 

" I do not know whether I read much, during this year 
and a half, beside law books, with two exceptions. I read 
Hume, though not for the first time ; but my principal occupa- 
tion with books, when not law books, was with the Latin 
Classics. I brought from college a very scanty inheritance of 
Latin. I now tried to add to it. I made myself familiar with 
most of Tully's orations, committed to memory large passages 
of some of them, read Sallust, and Caesar and Horace. Some 

17 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of Horace's odes I translated into poor English rhymes ; they 
were printed ; I have never seen them since. My brother was 
a far better Latin scholar than myself, and in one of his 
vacations we read Juvenal together. But I never mastered his 
style so as to read him with ease and pleasure. At this 
period of my life I passed a great deal of time alone. My 
amusements were fishing, and shooting, and riding; and all 
these were without a companion. I loved this occasional soli- 
tude then, and have loved it ever since, and love it still. I 
like to contemplate nature, and to hold communion, unbroken 
by the presence of human beings, with " this universal frame, 
thus wondrous fair ; " I like solitude also as favorable to 
thoughts less lofty. I like to let the thoughts go free, and 
indulge in their excursions. And when thinking is to be done, 
one must, of course, be alone. No man knows himself who 
does not thus, sometimes, keep his own company. At a subse- 
quent period of life, I have found that my lonely journeys, 
when following the court on its circuits, have afforded many 
an edifying day." (Autobiography, Correspondence, vol. i, 
P- I5-) 

Some of the great speeches of his life, he relates, 
were worked out on solitary journeys or during- amuse- 
ments. The argument in the Dartmouth College case 
was mainly arranged, he says, on a journey from Boston 
to Barnstable and back, and the oration at Bunker Hill 
was in great part composed while trout fishing in 
Mashpee Brook, near Cape Cod. 

In the spring of 1804, the family resources ran so 
low again that it became necessary for either his brother 
or himself to undertake something that would bring in 
a little money. They found in Boston a college friend, 
Dr. Perkins, afterwards a physician of some distinction, 
who was just about giving up the teaching of a school 
in Short Street. Ezekiel took the school and got on so 
well that he invited Daniel to come and live with him 
and study law in Boston. He accordingly went to Bos- 
ton and tried to secure a place in some lawyer's office; 
but being without friends or letters of introduction, he 
received rebuffs from some of the legal luminaries 
which were afterwards amusing recollections for him. 

Christopher Gore, whose fortune, after his death, 

78 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

built Gore Hall at Harvard College, was a prominent 
lawyer, an aristocratic Boston Federalist with a coach 
and four, and afterwards Governor of Massachusetts 
and a Senator at Washington. He had just returned 
from England, where he had been for eight years as 
one of the commissioners under the Jay treaty to settle 
claims for damages by British cruisers during the 
French Revolution. Hearing that he was to renew his 
practice and v\'anted a clerk, Daniel accompanied by a 
friend went to call on him. The friend was also un- 
known to ]\Ir. Gore, but went through the fonn of in- 
troducing Daniel, w'ho made a set speech of apology 
for the intrusion, said he was from the country, had 
friends in New Hampshire from whom he would ob- 
tain letters if meanwhile Mr. Gore would be gracious 
enough to hold open for him the clerkship. 

Gore, an accomplished man of the world, was evi- 
dently amused and interested by the whole perform- 
ance. He spoke kindly, made many inquiries, and after 
a conversation of about a quarter of an hour, as Web- 
ster rose to depart, he said : 

" My young friend, you look as though you might be 
trusted. You say you came to study, and not to waste time. 
I will take you at your word. You' may as well hang up your 
hat, at once ; go into the other room ; take your book and 
sit down to reading it, and write at your convenience to New* 
Hampshire for your letters." (Autobiography, Correspond- 
ence, vol. i, p. i8.) 

This was a great piece of educational fortune. It 
brought Webster at once into the highest circle of law 
and politics in New England. He became familiar with 
the best methods, saw distinguished men, the leaders of 
the bar : Chief Justice Parsons, Dexter, Otis, and Sulli- 
van ; and to this source Senator Lodge traces " that 
strong taste for everything dignified and refined which 
was so marked a trait of his disposition and habits." 
It no doubt increased that trait ; but the cause of it, as 
already intimated, was in his original home surround- 

79 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

ings, which were FederaHst and refined with a great 
respect for education and learning. The old Federalists 
were all great swells or the admirers of swells; and 
for some years, even up to the time he first went to 
Congress, Webster is said to have assumed at times 
a very Federalist and uplifted tone which the Demo- 
crats sometimes called arrogance.''* 

He remained in this ofiice nearly a year; and in his 
duty of teaching in the Short Street School on an occa- 
sion of his brother's absence, had for a pupil Edward 
Everett, who in time became a distinguished orator of 
the artificial, rhetorical type. The pupil also became 
Webster's life-long friend and admirer, the editor of 
the edition of his works in 185 1, and after his death his 
eulogist. ! 

In November of the year 1804 he appears to have 
made a trip to Albany with some gentleman who needed 
his services, paid the expenses, and gave him in addi- 
tion what he calls " one hundred and twenty dear 
delightfuls, all my own, yes, every dog of 'em. I 
was so proud to have a dollar of my own I was deter- 
mined to tell you of it." About a year afterwards his 
father wrote him that he had secured for him the 
clerkship of the county court in New Hampshire at a I 
salary of $1500, which seemed a great sum. It would 
support the whole family. The father was evidently 
delighted with the prize and was also gratified by the 
unanimity with which all the other judges had assented j 
to the appointment. The appointment indeed was one 
which the family had been hoping for ever since the 1 
Revolution. 

Daniel was becoming enamored of his profession. : 
He hated the clerkship and all clerkships. But the | 
fifteen hundred a year seemed the highest point of ter- 
restrial bliss. He showed the letter to Mr. Gore and 
was quite taken aback when his preceptor advised him 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xvii, p. 547. 

80 




MINIATURE OF WEBSTER AT THE AGE OF ABOUT 
TWEXTY-TWO TO TWEXTY-SIX 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

to decline this enormous salary and honor. He would 
soon be a lawyer, Mr. Gore said ; he would be able to 
make his way as well as others ; the office of clerk was 
precarious ; it depended on the will of others ; other times 
and other men might arise and the office be given to 
some one else. 

'■ And in the second place, if permanent it was a stationary 
place : that a clerk once I was probably nothing better than a 
clerk, ever ; and in short, that he had taken me for one who 
was not to sit with his pen behind his ear. ' Go on,' said he, 
' and finish your studies ; you are poor enough, but there are 
greater evils than poverty ; live on no man's favor ; what bread 
you do eat, let it be the bread of independence; pursue your 
profession, make yourself useful to your friends, and a little 
formidable to your enemies, and you have nothing to fear.' " 
(Autobiography, Correspondence, vol. i, p. 21.) 

Convinced at last by this advice, though not without 
great reluctance at the abandonment of such riches, 
Daniel had now the unpleasant task of breaking the 
news of this decision to his father, on whom he feared 
it would fall like a thunderbolt. 

" It was now mid-winter : I looked round for a sleigh 
(stage coaches, then, no more ran into the centre of New 
Hampshire than they ran to Baffin's Bay), and finding one that 
had come down to the market, I took passage therein, and in 
two or three days was set down at my father's door. I was 
afraid my own resolution would give way and that after all 
I should sit down to the clerk's table. But I fortified myself 
as well as I could. I put on, I remember, an air of confidence, 
success, and gaiety. It was evening, my father was sitting 
before his fire, and received me with manifest joy. He looked 
feebler than I had ever seen him, but his countenance lighted 
up on seeing his clerk stand before him, in good health and 
better spirits." 

The father enlarged on the value of the appoint- 
ment, how spontaneously it had been made, how kindly 
the Chief Justice had proposed it; and then Daniel, 
nerving himself, made his compliments to the judges. 
If he was to spend his life recording anybody's judg- 
6 81 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

ments he should be proud to record theirs; but he 
really thought he could, in the end, do better than 
fifteen hundred a year; he meant to use his tongue in 
court, not his pen; to be an actor, not a register of 
other men's actions; and that he hoped to astonish his 
own father in his own court by his professional attain- 
ments. 

" For a moment I thought he was angry. He rocked his 
chair slightly; a flash went over an eye, softened by age, but 
still as black as jet; but it was gone, and I thought I saw that 
parental partiality was, after all, a little gratified at this appa- 
rent devotion to an honorable profession, and this seeming 
confidence of success in it. ' Well, my son, your mother has 
always said you would come to something or nothing, she was 
not sure which ; and I think you are now about settling that 
doubt for her.' This he said, and never a word spoke more 
to me on the subject. I stayed at home a week, promised to 
come to him again as soon as I was admitted, and returned 
to Boston." 

So he abandoned the temptation of present' riches; 
and it was many years before his fees were more than 
fifteen hundred a year. He was admitted to the Boston 
Bar in March, 1805 ; returned to New Hampshire, and 
opened an office in the village of Boscawen, near his 
father's farm, where for two and a half years he prac- 
ticed law sufficiently to support himself and help the 
family. He studied much, read history and literature, 
and wrote articles and reviews for the Boston Anthol- 
ogy^ a famous New England magazine in its day and 
the forerunner of the North American Review. 

Meantime, his father died, and there being nothing 
now to keep him at home Daniel turned over his law 
practice and the care of his mother and sisters to Ezekiel, 
and carried out his original intention of going to live 
in Portsmouth, the principal trading town and commer- 
cial centre of the State. A few dollars could be made 
at Boscawen, but there was " no pleasure of a social 
sort," he says, and that was always an important thing 
for him. At Portsmouth there was some chance for a 

82 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

lawyer to make more than six or seven hundred dollars 
a year, which was all he had been able to get out of 
country practice at Boscawen. He, however, continued 
to help support his mother and sisters, and pay off 
the father's debts, which he had assumed. He was 
ambitious for the larger and more learned legal field ; 
and in an enthusiastic youthful letter he had denounced 
what he called " the low resources of attorneyism " and 
" the mean, money catching practices " of country busi- 
ness where, he says, " we cannot study because we must 
pettifog."*^ 

It was September, 1807, that he went to live in 
Portsmouth, and he remained there almost nine years, 
" very happy years," he says. Portsmouth was an old 
seaport with history, tradition, and families going far 
back into colonial times. The principal Congregational 
church of the town was in charge of the Rev. Dr. 
Buckminster, father of the brilliant young man who, 
as usher at Exeter, had tried to lead Webster out 
of his bashfulness in public speaking. Young Buck- 
minster was now in charge of a church in Boston, 
and was one of the founders of the Boston Anthol- 
ogy for which Webster wrote articles. On Web- 
ster's first appearance in the church in Portsmouth, 
soon after his arrival, the daughters of Dr. Buck- 
minster were much impressed by his appearance. 
One of them immediately reported that she was sure 
" he had a most marked character for good or evil." 
Another described him as " slender and apparently of 
delicate organization ; his large eyes and massive brow 
seemed very predominant above the other features, 
which were sharply cut, refined and delicate. The 
paleness of his complexion was heightened by hair as 
black as a raven's wing." 

He was twenty-five, but evidently had not yet gained 
his full vigor, and was out of proportion ; not filled out 

* Correspondence, vol. i, p. 222. 

83 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to the harmony of later years. But that brow and the 
black eyes and hair, then as always, riveted everyone's 
attention. He was even then an actor in every fibre 
of his being. The wonderful effect of his maturest 
speeches of later life was heightened by every motion 
of his frame, and every glance of his countenance speak- 
ing with the words. It was instinctive with him, a 
gift, an idiosyncrasy of muscles and nerves ; and it 
slowly increased in effectiveness with years. Mrs. 
Buckminster Lee when a girl saw its first manifesta- 
tions and she described also the humor, the droll sar- 
casm which he afterwards used as such an effective 
weapon in debate. 

" We soon saw enough of him to appreciate in some de- 
gree, young as we were, his extraordinary genius, and the 
noble qualities of his character. The genial and exceedingly 
rich humor that he so often exhibited was, perhaps, at this 
time more prized by us than any other of the diversified talents 
we admired in him. He soon formed a circle around him, of 
which he was the life and soul. We young people saw him only 
rarely, in friendly visits. I well remember one afternoon that 
he came in, when the elders of the family were absent. He 
sat down by the window, and, as now and then an inhabitant 
of the small town passed through the street, his fancy was 
caught by their appearance and his imagination excited, and 
he improvised the most humorous imaginary histories about 
them, which would have furnished a rich treasure for Dickens, 
could he have been the delighted listener, instead of the young 
girl for whose amusement this wealth of invention was ex- 
pended. Hon. Mr. Mason, of Portsmouth, who delighted in 
the humor so often displayed by Mr. Webster, used to say, 
that ' There was never such an actor lost to the stage as he 
would have made had he chosen to turn his talents in that 
direction.'" (Correspondence, vol. i, p. 439-) 

It was a fine life for a young fellow of his talents 
to have dropped into this intelligent and agreeable set 
in a New England seaport, with ships and commerce 
enough to give a picturesque touch of the great world 
beyond the waters. On a smaller scale it must have 
been something like the old life in Salem which had 

84 




Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Company 

MRS. GRACE FLETCHER WEBSTER 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

such a curious and fascinating connection with India 
and the East. Webster may have acquired at this time 
his love of the salt air and the sea, and added a new 
domain of thought and romantic imagery to his expand- 
ing mind. The sea air may also have had another 
effect; for we read that he soon grew stouter and his 
delicacy of health disappeared. 

He had frolicked in the town as a bachelor less 
than a year, when he disappeared, on a mere visit as 
was supposed to his old home, and returned married 
to Miss Grace Fletcher, daughter of the minister of the 
church at Hopkinton. She seems to have been one of 
those typical New England women of good education 
and bright mind, possibly of frail physique, but full of 
energy and interested in things of the mind.'' She be- 
came a most congenial companion for her husband. The 
singular success and applause which he afterwards 
attained, never disturbed, it is said, the balance of her 
mind. Even when she went with him to Washington 
and witnessed some of the gayeties of the capital, her 
frank and winning manner remained untouched by any 
social sordidness. In Portsmouth she increased the 
circle of her husband's admirers and gave him a delight- 
ful home, one of the wooden houses of New England, 
where the low-ceilinged simple parlor is described as a 
most attractive room when presided over by this pair 
who had a very happy faculty for entertaining their 
friends. Indeed the reminiscences of this period of his 
life are nearly all of his gayety and humor rather than 
of the stateliness and dignity of his later years. 

Although the defeats and victories in a lawyer's 
career are apt to be about equal in number, it has be- 
come a biographical custom to enlarge on the victories 
and ignore the defeats. It may be well, therefore, to 
mention that Webster defended at Plymouth one Burn- 
ham, tried for murder. Wonderful to relate, he failed 

' Harvey, Reminiscences of Webster, p. 319. 

85 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to acquit him, and Burnham was duly liung on Powder 
House Hill in the presence of ten thousand spectators 
and with a Scotch Presbyterian minister preaching an 
hour's sermon at him.^ 

Some of the leaders of the Boston Bar — Joseph 
Story, Samuel Dexter, and Parsons — practised in 
southern New Hampshire, and Webster had a chance 
to meet them and learn their methods. Some of the 
New Hampshire lawyers — Jeremiah Smith, WiUiam 
Plumer (a Democratic Governor of the State), George 
Sullivan, Ichabod Bartlett and Jeremiah Mason — have 
left a good reputation behind them for learning and 
intellect. Judge Story, who was certainly capable of 
estimating them, ranked them very high ; and they, no 
doubt, helped to train Webster.^ 

His law office in Portsmouth was a common, ordi- 
nary looking room, it is said, " with less furniture and 
more books than common ; " and his lawyer's life dur- 
ing those nine years is conspicuous principally for his 
association with one man, Jeremiah Mason, fourteen 
years his senior. Mason was a huge man of six feet 
seven, massive in proportion, uncouth and awkward, but 
of remarkable ability. He was of the best type of trial 
lawyer and general practitioner, retained in nearly all 
the cases of importance in southern New Hampshire. 
In character he was liberal minded and friendly, free 
from small jealousies, but at times very caustic, con- 
temptuous and profane. " By thy size and thy lan- 
guage," said a Shaker to him one day, " I judge that I 
thou art Jeremiah Mason." 

* Mr. Albert S. Batchellor, editor of the New Hampshire 
State Papers, kindly called my attention to this trial, still 
remembered among New Hampshire lawyers. Grafton Bar 
Association, vol. ii, p. 604. Senator Hoar, in his Autobiography, 
mentions hearing Webster late in life arguing a cause which 
he lost and which was not a popular one, or one in which he 
cared to preserve his speech. He appeared before a com- 
mittee of the Massachusetts legislature on behalf of the re- 
monstrants against filling in the Back Bay district of Boston. 

* Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, p. 249. 

86 



EARLY PROFESSIONAL DAYS 

He served four years in the United States Senate 
and lived to the age of eighty-five, dying only four 
years before Webster. They were constant friends to 
the last ; and Webster said of him in his autobiography 
that he had more native resources, a stronger intellect, 
and a clearer and quicker mental vision than any man 
in the country, not exceeding Chief Justice Marshall. 
" If you were to ask me," Webster once said, " who 
was the greatest lawyer in the country, I should answer 
John Marshall, but if you took me by the throat and 
pinned me to the wall and demanded my real opinion, 
I should be compelled to say it was Jeremiah Mason." ^'^ 
But so ephemeral is the fame of a mere advocate that 
Mason would long ago have been forgotten were it not 
for his connection with Webster. 

Before Webster came to Portsmouth Mason had 
been opposed to him in a criminal case in which Webster 
had taken the place of the attorney-general. Two some- 
what different accounts of the case have been given ; 
and perhaps the better one is by Mr. Curtis, who says 
he had it from Mason himself. 

" I had heard," said Mr. Mason, " that there was a young 
lawyer up there, who was reputed to be a wonderfully able 
fellow ; and was said by the country people to be as black as 
the ace of spades, but I had never seen him. When they told 
me that he had prepared the evidence for this prosecution, I 
thought it well to be careful, especially as the trial was to be 
conducted by the attorney-general. But when the trial came 
on, the attorney-general was ill, and the prosecutors asked that 
Webster should be allowed to conduct the case. I assented 
to this readily, thinking I ought to have an easy time of it ; 
and we were introduced to each other. We went at it, and 
I soon found that I had no light work on my hands. He 
examined the witnesses, and shaped his case with so much 
skill, that I had to exert every faculty I possessed. I got 
the man off, but it was as hard a day's work as I ever did 
in my life. There were other transactions behind this one 
which looked quite as awkward. When the verdict was an- 
nounced, I went up to the dock, and whispered to the pris- 



Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, p. 251. 

87 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

oner, as the sheriff let him out, to be off' for Canada, and 
never to put himself within the reach of that young Webster 
again. From that time forth I never lost sight of Mr. Web- 
ster, and never had but one opinion of his powers." (Curtis, 
Life, vol. i, p. -/T, note. For other version see Lodge, Life of 
Webster, pp. 38, 39.) 

At the Portsmouth Bar, Webster was soon almost 
on an equality with Mason, and they were on opposite 
sides of pretty much every important cause. On one 
occasion, it is said, the clerk was calling the docket and 
various counsel entering their names, Mason and Web- 
ster answering for plaintiff or defendant in almost 
every one. At last a case was called and Mason said : 
"Webster, what side are you on in this case?" 
" I don't know," said Webster, " take your choice." 
The frequent contact for nine years with such a keen 
opponent as Mason re-educated Webster, as he frankly 
admitted. It compelled him to careful preparation and 
the utmost alertness and the most rigid logic in court. 
It changed completely his style of public speaking, and 
made him a logician instead of a declaimer. He aban- 
doned altogether, he tells us, the florid style of oratory, 
the vicious system he had learned at college. He be- 
came master of those short sentences which are so con- 
spicuous in some of his famous speeches. He sought 
for that aptness in words and that telling homely 
brevity for which Mason was so distinguished. He 
always acknowledged his indebtedness to his instructor 
and the two men remained old cronies long after Web- 
ster left Portsmouth. When Mason was in the Senate 
they travelled together to Washington, renewing old 
times, fighting their battles over again, and possibly 
there were occasions when they met again in court. 

" I have been written to go to New Hampshire," writes 
Webster to him in 1830, " to try a cause against you next 
August. If it were an easy and plain case on our side, I might 
be willing to go ; but I have some of your pounding in my 
bones yet, and don't care about any more till that wears out." 
(Correspondence, vol. i, p. 489.) 



RELATIONS WITH JUDGE STORY 

In 1812 the old Federalist Governor, Oilman, who 
had been many times re-elected to the office and was a 
firm friend of the Webster family, lending the father 
money, gave another instance of his continuing friend- 
ship by appointing Daniel attorney-general of the State. 
But tlie council, who were principally of the opposite 
political party, voted five to three against confirming the 
appointment.^^ 

While he lived in Portsmouth Webster's business 
was mostly in circuit practice. He attended the Supe- 
rior Court in most of the counties and became familiar 
with the lawyers and people of a large part of the State. 
But his practice at best was not lucrative and never 
could be forced beyond its narrow limit. " I do not 
think," he says, " it was ever worth fairly two thousand 
dollars a year." ^- This was not much better than the 
court clerkship salary which had been offered him, and 
he finally resolved to move to Boston, which he did in 
the summer of 18 16. Mason also, some years after- 
wards, at the age of sixty-four, moved to Boston, and 
after practicing there for six years had accumulated 
what he deemed sufficient to retire upon from the more 
active duties of his profession. 

In the life of Judge Story by his son, complaint 
was made that Webster would not furnish for that work 
either the letters to him from the Judge or allow his 
own letters to be printed, showing the advice and assist- 
ance the Judge had given him in the Ashburton Treaty 
and other subjects. It may have been that Webster 
was merely following a rule he had found necessary 
to lay down of never giving such permission, even in 
apparently innocent cases. He had found, he said, that 
a permission once given was assumed to extend to other 
and to all occasions ; and he preferred to let people do 
such printing entirely on their own responsibility. 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, pp. 422, 423. 
" Autobiography, Correspondence, vol. i, p. 25. 
" Life of Judge Story, vol. ii, p. 408. 

89 



13 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The letters in question, however, and more of the 
same sort, are now printed in the proceedings of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, and also in the Na- 
tional Edition of Webster's works. Most of them ask 
the Judge quite difficult questions, which would take up 
a great deal of his time. For example, in the midst of 
the Knapp murder trial Webster writes to the Judge for 
the law on principal and accessory. Another letter be- 
gins " Help me to make a speech ; " and then asks for 
some very difficult law on the question of our northeast 
boundary on Canada and the relations of the United 
States to Great Britain at the close of the Revolution. 
Another, being short, may be quoted, as showing the 
intimacy of the two men. 

" Will you have the goodness to give me one hour of your 
valuable time? Let it be devoted to furnishing me with hints 
and authorities to the following points, viz. : 

" That a right to navigate the upper part of a river (say 
the St. Lawrence) draws after it a right to go to the ocean. 

" Whatever you think or find on this matter let me know 
by Wednesday or Thursday. 

"Your troublesome friend, D. Webster." 

In the case of two other letters we now have Story's 
answers in print. One is in the famous case of the 
American brig Creole carrying slaves who mutinied, 
took the ship to a port in the British West Indies, and 
were allowed by the British authorities to gain their 
freedom. Webster, then Secretary of State, seems to 
have acted upon the law given him by Judge Story in 
this case, which was a very delicate and impossible one, 
and nothing much could be done. We also have Web- 
ster's letter thanking the Judge and closing with a 
request for further assistance. 

" I am in the midst of things, and have need not only of 
all my own wits, but of the assistance of friends competent 
to give efficient aid. You can do more for me than all the rest 
of the world, because you can give me the lights I most want; 
and if you furnish them I shall be confident they will be true 
lights. I shall trouble you greatly the next three months. 

go 



RELATIONS WITH JUDGE STORY 

For the present I have to ask that you send me a draft of 
two articles." (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 2nd series, vol. xiv, 
p. 410.) 

The letter continues with requests for more work 
from the Judge in drawing- articles on extradition of 
criminals and on vessels driven by stress of weather 
into foreign ports, work which would now presumably 
be done by lawyers in subordinate positions in the State 
Department or in the Attorney-General's office. The 
Judge complied in an elaborate and careful answer. 
It was the time of the Ashburton Treaty of 1842, 
the most momentous event in our relations with 
England after the War of 1812. The Judge considered 
it the greatest move that had ever been made in the 
interests of permanent peace. " I will, therefore," he 
says, " hold myself ready at all times to aid your efforts, 
whenever you may think I can be of any real use in 
accomplishing so desirable an end." ^* 

These answers must have involved very considerable 
labor for Judge Story, who in those days was a Justice 
of the Supreme Court, a Circuit Judge for most of 
New England, a professor in the Harvard Law School, 
and writing numerous text-books. He was capable of 
almost unlimited labor. To understand, apart from 
his friendship for Webster, why he did these things and 
was asked to do them, we must remember that at that 
time the modern digests, text-books and various means 
of analyzing and indexing the law were almost totally 
unknown, and that the Government at Washington was 
so badly equipped and organized that Webster seems 
to have had no subordinates whom he could trust for 
such work. Judge Story was engaged in supplying the 
need of text-books, and he wrote a number of them, 
used both in England and America, and some of them, 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 160, 205, 298. 
See also a letter from Story showing that Webster consulted 
him in the debate on the Removal of the Deposits. Life of 
Story, vol. ii, p. 155. 

91 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

especially his " Conflict of Laws " and Commentaries 
on the Constitution, are still of high authority. 

In those days there was apt to be in every com- 
munity some lawyer of the right sort of memory for 
recollecting nearly all the important and sometimes un- 
important cases in the reports. His brethren resorted 
to him when they wanted precedents for supporting 
their reasoning, and it seems to have been the custom 
for him good-naturedly to comply. Since those days 
the reported cases have grown so numerous that no one 
man can remember more than an infinitesimal portion of 
them. Digests and indexes, of an ingenuity that would 
amaze both Webster and Story, have been invented and 
text-books which are in effect digests and indexes. 
Modern brief makers, or, indeed, students at law and 
head clerks, can now do with astonishing rapidity and 
with scarcely any great amount of memory the work 
which Webster and other busy trial lawyers of his time 
had to ask to have done for them as an act of brotherly 
kindness. 

This statement of the changed conditions seems 
necessary to correct a misconception of the professional 
relationship of Story and Webster. There was nothing 
very wonderful about it at the time, and nothing out 
of the way. Too much has been made of it by the New 
England abolitionists and their descendants and suc- 
cessors, who are forever trying to go back in Webster's 
life and detect the beginning of that horrible depravity 
and degeneration which finally, as they say, led him 
down, down to the infamy and abyss of the 7th of 
March speech in support of Clay's Compromise of 1850. 

Judge Story out of his abundant vigor and enthu- 
siasm made a practice of assisting other statesmen and 
lawyers besides Webster; and his son gives numerous 
instances of it. Several of the important acts of Con- 
gress of that period were drawn by him and others were 
submitted to him for revision before they were passed. 
He furnished material for more than one speech, and 

92 



I 



RELATIONS WITH JUDGE STORY 

his son seems to think that few important measures 
were debated in Congress without his aid being sought 
by some one. 

There are stories about Webster in his New Hamp- 
shire practice resorting for precedents to one Parker 
Noyes, who had a reputation for holding them Hke a 
tank. This and similar tales, like his help from Judge 
Story, seem to have led to the assertion sometimes made, 
that Webster was not after all a learned or profound 
lawyer. Possibly not; for I do not know of any 
formal or authoritative definition by the profession of 
the terms learned and profound. If such a definition 
is ever put forth I doubt very much if it will include 
the tanks alone. To come within the definition I should 
suppose a man would have to be a legal reasoner. Chief 
Justice Marshall was eminently such and was not re- 
markable for precedents. Story was strong in prece- 
dents, but if he had not also been a legal reasoner, I 
doubt if we should ever have heard much of him. Web- 
ster was certainly, by the admission of all his contem- 
poraries, a legal reasoner of very high order, especially 
in Constitutional law. Without deciding which was the 
greater, he certainly ranked in this respect among Mar- 
shall, Story, and similar men. He could always obtain 
in some way the precedents that belonged to his argu- 
ment ; and he handled them much better than those who 
knew nothing but precedents. 

Webster is said to have originated what has been 
called the short biography of most good lawyers, that 
they hved well, worked hard, and died poor. 

" Sitting one day at the bar in Portsmouth with an elderly 
member of the bar, his friend, who enjoyed with a sufficient 
indulgence that part of a lawyer's lot which consists in living 
well, Mr. Webster made an epitaph which would not be 
unsuitable : 

" Natus consumere fruges, 

Frugibus consumptis 

Hie jacet 

R.C.S." 

93 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

He was always fond of putting his jokes in Latin 
and continued the practice to the end of his Hfe. Writ- 
ing in court to General Lyman, he heads the letter : 

" Boston, Jan'y 15, 1845, Monday, 12 O'clock. 
" In C. Court of United States, Many v. Sizer being on trial 
and Tabcro diccnte in lotigioii and another snow storm appear- 
ing to be on the wing." (Lyman's Memorials, vol. ii, p. 152.) 

He closed the letter with a similar postscript : 

Half-past two o'clock. Cessat Taber ; Choate sequitur, in 
questione juris, crastino die. 

"Taber is learned, sharp and dry; 
Choate, full of fancy, soaring high : 
Both lawyers of the best report, 
True to their clients and the court; 
What sorrov/ doth a Christian feel, 
Both should be broken on a wheel." 

The point in the last line was that the case was 
about the infringement of a patent for making water 
wheels. 



V 
J 



94 



IV 

WAR OF l8l2 AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

Familiar with his father's public career and brought 
up in an atmosphere of New Hampshire poHtics, it 
would have been strange if Webster had not been drawn 
in the same direction. When twenty-two years old on 
a visit to his father in 1804, there was a hot contest for 
the Governorship between Governor Gilman and Gover- 
nor Langdon. Gilman was the Federalist, had lent the 
father money, was a stanch friend of the family, and 
Daniel was asked to write a pamphlet on the Gilman 
side. " I did the deed," he says, " at a single sitting 
of a winter's day and night," calling it " An Appeal to 
Old Whigs." It describes the complete immaculateness 
of the Federalists and the utter depravity of the Demo- 
crats in regulation partisan style. It is rather above 
the average of such productions ; but except for a sen- 
tence here and there is, of course, far inferior to the 
Webster standard of later years. 

Two years afterwards, in 1806, he delivered a Fourth 
of July address at Concord which is a decided improve- 
ment on the " Appeal to Old Whigs," shows maturer 
political thought ; and in two years more, in 1808, he 
wrote a little pamphlet called " Considerations on the 
Embargo Laws," which is still better. The steady ad- 
vance in power of statement and argument shown in 
these three attempts is very interesting and characteristic 
of his development. But he was not yet in politics ; and 
it was not until four years afterwards that he did any- 
thing to show that he was of real political value. What 
he said at Concord and on the embargo was, however, 
a beginning for him and involves the political situation 
of the time. 

95 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

He had been brought up a FederaHst, the name given 
to the more conservative of the two parties that formed 
after the Revokition, and the adoption of the National 
Constitution of 1787. It was the party that supported 
Washington's administration as President ; the party of 
Hamilton and John Adams; the party that incHned to 
Nationalism and a strong central government as opposed 
to the extreme State rights of Jefferson and the Repub- 
lican party, as it was usually called. But Democratic 
party is a more descriptive name for it. 

When these two parties were forming soon after 
the adoption of our National Constitution, the world 
suddenly heard of the first scenes of the French Revolu- 
tion, the most momentous event in European history 
since the Reformation. It was in fact a terrible and 
savage outbreak of the main principle of the Reforma- 
tion, the right of private judgment, applied to political 
government instead of to religion. Such an application 
was inevitable. We had made it in our own Revolu- 
tion, where we insisted upon our right to govern our- 
selves, to be free from taxation unless represented, to 
be independent because we were a people naturally 
separated from Great Britain. Our Revolution was 
comparatively mild, because we were Anglo-Saxons and 
because our grievances were slight compared to those 
of France, where the masses of the people were notori- 
ously held down by a monarchy, an aristocracy and a 
rigid system which violated every doctrine of the rights 
of man, the rights of private political judgment, and all 
the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

The independence which we won, and our conduct 
in obtaining it, were not generally considered any serious 
menace to the thrones and aristocracy of Europe. But 
the atrocities of the French masses when aroused, their 
slaughtering, cruelty and insanity, their inability to 
govern themselves or carry out a single one of the doc- 
trines of liberty which they professed, thoroughly 
alarmed all the rest of Europe and turned many a liberal 

96 



THE WAR OF 1812 

into a conservative. For the next twenty-five years the 
Whig party in England sank into the utmost insignifi- 
cance, and there has never since been such ascend- 
ency of tory principles and extreme toryism. Eng- 
land, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain and even Norway 
and Sweden became more and more animated with the 
one desire of combining against France either to wipe 
her off the map, or restore to her by force her old 
monarchical and aristocratic system. It seemed to the 
other European nations, or at least to the conservatives 
and tories among them, that France was threaten- 
ing civilization and even humanity itself ; and that unless 
she were curbed every monarchy and aristocracy would 
fall as hers had fallen, and all Europe become a scene 
of desolation, anarchy and ruin. 

The first ten years of the French turmoil, the rule 
of Danton, Alarat, and Robespierre and the Reign of 
Terror, had passed during Webster's boyhood ; and just 
about the time he went to college at the close of the 
century. Napoleon began to appear in the tragic drama 
of Europe, at first as the young officer who detected the 
key of the strategic situation at Toulon, and drove the 
English fleet from the harbor, then as the first soldier 
to understand the situation in Paris and show the gov- 
ernment how to sweep the mob from the streets with 
cannon. 

From that moment his advance was sure. The man 
who knew how to control the mobs was master of every- 
thing. Citizen, General, First Consul, Emperor, it made 
no difference what name you gave him, he was the man 
for the time, the one supreme mind. In a few months 
he was in control of everything, carrying his conquests 
into Germany, Prussia, Austria ; driving back the allied 
nations that were determined to restore monarchy and 
aristocracy to France, abolish equality and the rights 
of man, or exterminate the whole French people. 

For fifteen years, until the Battle of Waterloo in 
181 5, Napoleon performed prodigies of law and order, 
7 97 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

stable government, public solvency, commercial and 
industrial prosperity, internal communication of roads 
and canals that so amazed the rest of the world, 
that they have hardly yet been able to grasp the facts. 
He placed his relatives and favorite generals on the 
thrones of Spain, Holland and Scandinavia. He ex- 
tended his conquests to the Pyramids of the Nile and 
to Palestine. He established a republic in northern 
Italy. He had prepared under his direction the code 
of laws that is known by his name. He enforced it on 
the Germanic provinces, where it still remains. It is 
still the law of France, and of the American State of 
Louisiana. 

His guiding principles were quite simple. The mobs, 
confusion and murderous doings in France he repressed 
with artillery and a military organization and skill 
unequalled up to his time, and perhaps never equalled. 
France became the safest place in the world. That 
done, he took up some of the sound ideas of the Revo- 
lution, and made them orderly and respectable. He 
abolished root and branch the aristocratic system, the 
ancient regime, as it was called, with all its absurdities, 
tyranny, degeneracy, and profligacy which had con- 
trolled everything and caused the Revolution. He made 
merit the test of every office in the government service, 
where before the test had been birth and rank. Even 
in the navy no one could become an officer without a 
pedigree. But under Napoleon the lowest peasant could 
become a general or secretary of state if he showed 
capacity for a general's or a statesman's work. 

Napoleon's armies which conquered all Continental 
Europe were organized on this basis, and their enthusi- 
asm, devotion and courage have, it is generally supposed, 
never been equalled except perhaps in the modern armies 
of Japan. Indeed the whole French nation almost went 
out of their minds with enthusiasm and devotion when 
they discovered that not only were anarchy, cruelty, 
torture, injustice, and wholesale executions stopped, but 

98 



THE WAR OF 1812 

that preferment in the whole government service, civil 
and military, had, in perfect good faith, been thrown 
open to the whole population, and that all the feudal 
absurdities of the middle ages, the crushing taxation, 
and the restraints on trade, commerce and industry were 
gone never to return. 

This was Napoleon's understanding and carrying 
out of the doctrine of equality, which had been so much 
talked of before his time, but never put in practice. 
Equality, as he enforced it, meant equality before the 
law for rich and poor alike, freedom from class oppres- 
sion and governmental oppression, and equality of op- 
portunity based on merit and efficiency, so far as such 
opportunity could be given by laws. 

He did not believe that the French people were at 
that time capable of conducting a purely Republican or 
Democratic form of government, although their admira- 
tion for such forms in speech and writing had been very 
great. He believed that their excitable temperaments, 
totally unaccustomed to self-government, must be kept 
in order for a long time by military force, and he cer- 
tainly lived up to this belief. He thought, however, 
that they were competent to Hve under a modified or 
monarchical Republicanism ; and in the offices of almost 
absolute power which he held, whether called First 
Consul or Emperor, he always submitted himself as a 
candidate to the vote of the whole people and was elected 
in every instance by overwhelming majorities. He also 
established a legislative assembly of moderate authority. 

The success of this semi-Republicanism was unques- 
tionably wonderful for half a generation. It reju- 
venated France. The people had never been so prosperous 
and happy. But the more successful it was the more 
the allies, with England and Austria at their head, 
were determined to destroy it. It meant, they believed, 
sure ruin for their civil order and political systems. An 
elective head of a nation, and not only elected, but him- 
self of obscure birth, without pedigree or legitimacy 

99 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

from the divine right of kings, does not trouble or excite 
us very much now ; but at that time it seemed to most 
Europeans to cut at the roots of their most cherished 
poHtical and even reHgious principles. 

The feeling in this country toward Napoleon has, 
perhaps, been too much influenced by what has been 
written about him in England, where he was held up to 
universal execration as a monster of infamy. It is 
difficult to conceive of a crime that has not been imputed 
to him. He was described as a murderer and an 
assassin with ability only to corrupt and mislead the 
French people, and in private life habitually addicted 
to the most unnamable debaucheries and the lowest vices. 

His followers laughed at these charges, and when 
he himself read the books and pamphlets containing 
them, he also laughed and asked, " How could I get 
time for these things ? " In the intimate descriptions 
of him by his friends, he appears as a most abstemious 
man of well-regulated life and of a capacity for work 
and for going without sleep, whether in the saddle or 
at his desk, almost surpassing belief. If in addition to 
this he had also such a capacity for debauchery as is 
described, he was certainly a great deal more than 
human. 

Among people of moderate opinions, who reject the 
personal attacks upon him, one of the weak points of 
his career seems to have been that he had a thirst for 
conquest ; that he was not content merely to defend 
France from her enemies ; that he intended to conquer 
the whole civilized world and turn it into his private 
empire, where he could enforce his famous code and 
carry out his ideals of industrial Republicanism and 
equality of opportunity for the masses. His reply to 
this was that he had often tried to stop the wars, had 
sometimes succeeded, but that the allies, jealous of the 
prosperity of France, had begun the wars again ; that 
they would not let either him or France alone, and that 
to protect her he must surround her by a circle of con- 

100 



THE WAR OF 1812 

quered country. But this question raises the whole 
history of his career, will possibly never be settled 
and certainly cannot be discussed here. 

It has been thought also to have been one of his 
weaknesses that although he abolished the old French 
aristocracy, yet towards the end of his career he estab- 
lished another one composed of his own successful gen- 
erals and statesmen ; and while this aristocracy pro- 
fessed to be one of merit, recruited from the middle 
classes, like the English aristocracy, yet it is supposed 
to be doubtful if that method of recruiting it could have 
been kept up in France. 

Although he was an elected Emperor, he was so 
ambitious to perpetuate his family in that office, that be- 
cause she was childless, he divorced himself from his 
wife Josepliine, the only woman he ever loved, and 
married a daughter of his arch enemy, the Emperor of 
Austria ; and this divorce from Josephine, some of his 
greatest admirers have found it hard to forgive. The 
execution of the Duke d'Enghien, a loyalist of the old 
aristocracy, was continually brought up against him as 
an instance of his cold-blooded cruelty, although it is 
probable that, the execution having been done without 
his knowledge, he haughtily refused, as was his prac- 
tice, to repudiate the work of his subordinates. 

All these things, the vast armies of four and five 
hundred thousand men on each side that swept over the 
whole continent of Europe, and crossed and recrossed 
the snows of the Alps, for fifteen years ; the marvellous 
strategy and tactics unknown before in the military art, 
the stupendous battles — Austerlitz, Wagram, Hohenlin- 
den — the unexpected resourcefulness of the French peo- 
ple, who seemed as if they would be able to breed boys 
for endless slaughter and supply war material and money 
forever; all these were the great events of European 
history and the subject of continual discussion during 
Webster's youth and early manhood. 

Among American political parties, the Federalists 

lOI 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

were opposed to the French Revolution., mistrusted its 
ideas, mistrusted Napoleon and echoed the English 
hatred of him to the letter. Among our conservative 
classes the common saying was that England was the 
champion of civilization against the degradation of 
democracy. For many years after the Napoleonic wars 
were over, this violent feeling against France remained. 
To denounce Napoleon was an essential badge of respec- 
tability in many parts of the country, strongly Federal- 
ist ; and long after Napoleon's death, the first book pub- 
lished in his favor was denounced from the pulpit. 

The Democratic party favored France ; they were 
in sympathy with many of the doctrines of the French 
Revolution and they had no fears of the spread of 
French anarchy. They believed that beneath all Na- 
poleon's conquests and absolutism there was an honest 
purpose on the side of human rights and modern prog- 
ress. They were enthusiastic over the recollection of 
the assistance France had given us in our own Revo- 
lution; they insisted that we owed her a debt of grati- 
tude; and during Washington's administration he and 
the Federahsts had with difficulty prevented Jefferson 
and his party from forcing us into giving active help 
to the French nation against Great Britain and the allies. 

Webster accepted, of course, the Federalist view of 
the Napoleonic wars ; and, perhaps, his most positive 
statement on the subject was in that Fourth of July 
oration which he deHvered when a boy in college. Na- 
poleon at that time had returned from Egypt and had 
become the supreme ruler of France; and young Web- 
ster in the regulation Federalist swing denounced fair 
France and described her hero as " the gasconading 
pilgrim of Egypt." 

The boy was, of course, merely repeating what he 
had been taught. That Napoleon as a soldier was a 
mere lucky braggart, was naturally the first opinion of 
his skill, especially among his opponents; and possibly 
Webster never lived long enough to reach the impartial 

102 



THE WAR OF 1812 

point of view where he could fully appreciate those 
wonders of strategy and tactics. 

In his later years Webster was not a violent partisan, 
and indeed was famous for his independence in politics. 
But he was brought up a very strict partisan. His 
father was of that type ; and once, it is said, being taken 
sick in a Democratic town had himself removed lest he 
should die in such pollution. 

In the year 1806, when Webster, twenty- four years 
old, delivered his Fourth of July oration at Concord, 
our relations to England and France were approaching 
a crisis. Ever since the French Revolution began and 
involved England and all the nations of Europe in war 
there had been a decided advantage in our favor, because 
the more the European nations became involved in the 
contest the more the carrying trade of the world was 
thrown into the hands of American ship owners. 
America became the greatest neutral trader. She car- 
ried supplies of all sorts to the belligerents, and also to 
their colonies. American enterprise had not been turned 
inwards to develop manufacturing, canals, railroads, and 
mining. We had not yet reached the Rocky Mountains. 
Our energy, indeed, had only just crossed the Alle- 
ghenies. Ships and cargoes and the numerous interests 
dependent on them were the most important and im- 
pressive source of money making; and in 1806 this 
trade and navigation had been steadily increased for 
nearly fifteen years by the French Revolution and the 
Napoleonic wars. Our merchant vessels crossed the 
Indian Ocean and the Pacific ; our whalers sought their 
game from the equator to the poles ; the stars and stripes 
though only a generation old was seen in every climate ; 
we had acquired a large part of the carrying trade of 
the world, and were pressing close upon England's 
dominion of the seas. 

This shipping interest was particularly prosperous 
in New England, and is sometimes described as if that 
were the sole seat of it, probably because New England 

103 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

became more aggressive in defending it. But the sea- 
faring prosperity was also to be found in New York, 
and on the Delaware, was decidedly prosperous in the 
Chesapeake, and extended to the ports of Charleston 
and Savannah. 

That this prosperity should rouse the hostility of both 
England and France was natural. England would like 
to check it because it was gradually depriving her of her 
imperial attribute of the carrying trade of the world 
and was supplying her enemy, France, with the neces- 
saries of life. France would like to check it because it 
was supplying England with the necessaries of life, and 
because Napoleon shrewdly saw in it a chance to draw 
America to his side and make her an enemy of England. 

Ever since our Revolution, England as mistress of 
the seas had claimed and exercised what she called her 
right of seizing our sailors when found ashore by her 
press gangs, and forcing them to serve in her men-of- 
war ; and also the supposed right of stopping our mer- 
chant vessels, and even our men-of-war, and searching 
them for British subjects which, when found, she carried 
off to serve in her own ships. She denied what is now 
called the right of expatriation. Once a British subject, 
always a British subject, was her doctrine, and her 
subjects could be taken by her wherever found. 

The press gang was a method of recruiting her navy 
authorized by act of Parliament. She had always had 
difficulty in recruiting both her army and navy; and 
the army had been often recruited by hiring foreign 
mercenaries as in the case of the Hessians in our Revo- 
lution. The press gang was no doubt lawful enough 
from her own point of view, when used on her own 
subjects in her own ports. But when used on our citi- 
zens in foreign ports, it was an outrage and a violation 
of public law and human rights that justified war. 

In other words, as we had submitted to these out- 
rages for many years, we had not yet attained our full 
national independence ; or if we may be said to have had 

104 



THE WAR OF 1812 

independence on the land, we certainly did not have it 
on the ocean. Napoleon saw in this an opportunity 
to arouse us for his own advantage by suggesting that 
if we wanted him to treat our merchant vessels with re- 
spect and admit them to trade in French ports, we must 
compel Great Britain to give us our rights on the high 
seas. To the Federalists this seemed mere low cunning 
on his part to embroil us with England; but to the 
Democrats it was a statesmianlike taking of an oppor- 
tunity and a very proper appeal to the manhood of 
Americans and all other neutral nations. 

At this time, however, in the year 1806, the Federal- 
ists were as severe as the Democrats in denouncing Eng- 
land for violating by search and impressment our rights 
upon the ocean; and Webster in his Concord address 
of that year said more severe things of the English 
than he ever said of them again in all the rest of his 
life. But both he and the Federalists were on the eve 
of a change in this respect, a change which had a pro- 
found influence upon the fortunes of both of them. 

Napoleon had overrun Prussia and ordered British 
vessels excluded from its ports; and in May, 1806, 
Great Britain by an order in council had declared a 
blockade of the coasts of Prussia and also of the coast 
of France from Ostend to the mouth of the Seine. 
This was to cut ofif neutrals, particularly America, from 
trading to those ports and supplying the Napoleonic 
armies. But it was a mere paper blockade, and did not 
fulfil the requirement of international law, that a block- 
ade, to be respected by other nations, must be an actual 
one. England, however, paid little attention to inter- 
national law in those days, and considered herself en- 
titled, as mistress of the seas, to seize any neutral that 
she believed had violated this mere paper proclamation. 

Napoleon retaliated by what became known as the 
Berlin decree, which was another paper proclamation 
blockading the British Islands and declaring that no 
vessel of any nation touching at British ports or at a 

105 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

British colony, should be allowed to enter French 
harbors. 

He, too, would seize American vessels believed to 
have violated this decree. England replied by another 
order in council in January, 1807, excluding all neutral 
vessels from trading with any port of France or her 
allies from which British vessels were excluded. And 
to this Napoleon replied by the famous Milan decree 
by which any vessel that had allowed itself to be 
searched by a British cruiser was declared to have lost 
its neutral character, and any vessel sailing between 
British ports should also lose its neutral character, and 
become lawful prize.' 

This was to arouse America into immediate hostility 
or war with England and turn her into an ally of France. 
Napoleon declared that he would maintain these severe 
measures against all neutral nations until each one 
roused itself to throw off British tyranny on the sea. 
America was, however, the only neutral nation of im- 
portance. All the rest were involved in the great strug- 
gle over Napoleon's conquests, liberty, and equaUty.^ 

Such, in brief, were the famous French Decrees and 
British Orders in Council, which brought on the War 
of 181 2. They were calculated to ruin our trade and 
drive us from the ocean, and on the ocean they made 
us a dependency of both France and England. In order 
to trade with any port on the continent of Europe an 
American vessel must first touch at a British port and 
pay taxes on her cargo. But if she did this she was 
liable to be seized and sold by Napoleon's government. 

American ships were being rapidly seized by either 

^ Napoleon had previously made a clever move with Louisi- 
ana, the great territory lying between the Mississippi River 
and the Rocky Mountains. He bought it from Spain in 1800, 
and intended to make it a strong French colony. But learn- 
ing in 1803 that England intended to attack it he sold it to us 
through the Democratic administration of Jefferson, thus pre- 
venting England getting it and securing the favorable regard of 
the American Democrats. 

106 



THE WAR OF 1812 

England or France under this new system ; and in June, 
1807, an event occurred close at home, that nearly 
brought on the war in that year. The British frigate 
Leopard found the United States frigate Chesapeake 
off the coast of Virginia, and being more powerful in 
men and guns, compelled her to give up four sailors. 

It almost precipitated war at once. Our people 
would probably have supported any immediate act of 
retaliation. But President Jefferson and the cooler 
heads of the dominant party were restrained by the 
thought of our weakness and our little navy in which 
neither party, at that time, had any confidence ; for Eng- 
land had a thousand warships, and we had just twelve. 
It is true that England's frigates were involved in the 
vast conflict of Europe ; but it seemed as if she might 
easily spare twenty-five or thirty to destroy our twelve. 
Jefferson, however, demanded reparation for the out- 
rage, and he ordered all British war vessels to leave the 
waters of the United States. Congress was summoned 
in special session, and on his recommendation passed 
the embargo act indefinitely prohibiting the departure of 
any vessel from the United States for a foreign port. 

An embargo was not a new idea. There had been 
one in Washington's administration, and several meas- 
ures of a similar restrictive character in the adminis- 
tration of John Adams. It was a good device to pro- 
tect shipping, keep enterprising captains and owners 
from rushing into danger until conditions could be 
more accurately known. This particular one, however, 
was intended not merely to protect our vessels, but to 
injure England's trade and prevent her receiving sup- 
plies. It was a retaliation in place of war. The Demo- 
crats wished to avoid war or postpone it if it possibly 
could be postponed. The party was composed princi- 
pally of the farming element of the population. They 
had adopted Jefferson's economical principles. They 
wished to pay off the national debt. They had no ships 
to be injured by the embargo. They wished to avoid 

107 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the expense of increasing- the navy and they had no 
confidence in the navy as it was. 

The French Decrees, the British Orders in Council, 
and the embargo had now changed the position of the 
FederaHsts, who were the ship-owning element of the 
population. They were now driven into a position which 
in the end ruined them as a political party. They had 
been a great and noble party in their time. The national 
government is to this hour conducted on the principles 
and methods which were laid down by them in the days 
of their power. Believing America incapable of making 
war upon both England and France, or upon either of 
them, they saw in the decrees and orders more danger 
from France than from England. Their ships, they be- 
lieved, were safer under English aggressions than under 
French aggressions ; and the greatest danger of all had 
come, they said, from our own Congress, whose em- 
bargo had tied up every one of their vessels to rot 
indefinitely by the wharves. 

Webster took this view and in his pamphlet on the 
embargo, written in 1808, changed from the enemy of 
England to her friend. The embargo, he argued, was 
unconstitutional because unlimited in time. An em- 
bargo for a definite period of a few months based on 
the seven or eight words in the Constitution giving 
Congress power " to regulate commerce," was no doubt 
allowable. But Congress had not been given power to 
destroy commerce by an indefinite embargo. The em- 
bargo was not intended to warn merchants, which was 
its only proper sphere. It was intended by the Demo- 
crats as a war measure against England. It was aimed 
to favor France and take sides with her against Eng- 
land. It was intended to force on a war with Eng- 
land. The Democrats wanted a British war and a 
French alliance. He enumerated a dozen or more places 
besides Sweden with which American vessels could still 
trade under the British Orders in Council. But the 
embargo had cut them off from these ; and the embargo 

108 



THE WAR OF 1812 

was therefore a worse enemy of the American ship- 
owner than England. 

In short, the embargo set New England indignation 
in a flame ; and the arguments were in time piled up by 
maturer hands than Webster's. That our ships should 
be seized and sold by England and France was bad 
enough ; but it was worse for our own government to 
seize them and let them rot by the wall. An idle ship 
is more ruinous than a captured one, because it must 
be kept in repair. To render valueless by a stroke of the 
pen thousands of American vessels, eight hundred thou- 
sand tons of shipping, as was said at the time, to de- 
prive of a livelihood the hundreds of thousands of men, 
women and children dependent on those vessels, was a 
worse blow than a foreign enemy would give. 

It hit New England hardest of all ; for in that region 
there were six towns that owned more than a third of 
the tonnage of the Union; and as the Southern people 
talked secession when it was proposed to deprive them 
by a stroke of the pen of millions of dollars' worth of 
slaves, so the New Englanders now talked of secession 
from the Union when they saw their fortunes and liveli- 
hoods swept away by a proclamation, and the noble 
and romantic ships, the pride of their lives, laid up as 
useless hulks. 

The year 1808 following the passage of the embargo 
act was Presidential election year. Jefferson was to go 
out of ofifice, and Webster, as a good Federalist, wrote 
his pamphlet against the embargo to help what he be- 
lieved to be the true cause. 

One might have supposed that his party would have 
won: for how could the Democrats or any political 
party survive a policy of such financial ruin as the Fed- 
eralists described the embargo act to be ? The Federalist 
candidates were C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, and 
Rufus King, of New York, selected after the manner 
of the time, one from the South and the other from the 
North, so as to catch the Federalists' votes of both sec- 

109 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

tions. But they received only forty-seven of the one 
hundred and seventy-six electoral votes, showing how 
deeply our people felt the outrages and insults of what 
had once been our mother country, and how strongly 
committed they were to the Democratic policy of retalia- 
tion upon England for her outrages. They had full 
confidence that the Democrats, no matter what mistakes 
they might make, were the only party that in the end 
could be trusted to defend the honor of the nation. 

The Federalists, it should be said here, had been 
now for some time in opposition. Still strong in the 
seaport towns, especially in New England, they had in 
the country at large become the minority. Their day 
of power had been Washington's two administrations 
and the administration of John Adams, ending in 1801. 
Then Jefferson and the Democrats went in and were 
the popular and powerful party for sixteen years. So 
Webster began his political career in a minority party, 
growing all the time weaker and more unpopular ; and 
for its misdeeds he was called to severe account in the 
famous debate with Hayne ; and indeed those misdeeds 
clung to him in one way or another all his life. 

As an injury to England, the embargo was not a 
success. It did not compel a withdrawal of the Orders 
in Council. British manufacturers and merchants were 
injured by the loss of the American trade, as they after- 
wards testified before Parliament. But British ship- 
owners rather liked the embargo because it tended to 
leave the ocean-carrying trade to their vessels. It lasted 
two years, unquestionably inflicting heavy losses on all 
our shipping interests and even injuring the farmers of 
the Democratic party who found their crops and produce 
sinking in value because they could not be carried to 
foreign countries to be sold. In 1809 it was repealed, 
largely because it seemed likely to break up the Union. 
It was replaced by the non-intercourse act which pro- 
hibited American ships from trading with Great Britain 
or France while their offensive measures continued, 

no 



THE WAR OF 1812 

but allowing trade with other nations. This was less 
injurious to our commerce than the embargo, but how- 
ever much it may have injured the business of British 
manufacturers and merchants, it had no effect in com- 
pelling a withdrawal of the British Orders and the 
French Decrees. It was repealed in 1810, and Madison, 
who was now President, began preparations for the war 
with England, which seemed inevitable and could no 
longer be postponed by embargoes or non- intercourse 
acts. 

As stop-gaps to satisfy our people, gain time, and 
lead them to think that something aggressive was being 
done, the embargo and the non-intercourse act, no doubt, 
served a purpose. Their defenders always said that 
the embargo saved our w^hole marine from annihilation 
and our merchants from universal bankruptcy; for if 
our ships had been allowed to go out they would have 
all been captured and the loss would have been total in- 
stead of partial and temporary. By seizing all our ships 
and cargoes and imprisoning the crews of them, the 
resources of England and France would have been aug- 
mented and ourselves enfeebled. We should have had 
all the calamities of war without any of its advantages, 
and would then have been forced into an immediate 
war. 

With the stop-gaps all removed, Congress tried an- 
other plan which was, on its face, an attempt to entice 
either France or England to take our side of the contro- 
versy. An act was passed which declared that if either 
Great Britain or France would revoke her offensive 
decrees, our non-intercourse law would be revived 
against the other nation. This was Napoleon's oppor- 
tunity and he announced that the French Decrees would 
cease to operate after the ist of November, 1810, if 
the English should revoke their Orders and renounce 
their absurd principle of blockade or the .\mericans 
should cause their rights to be respected by the English. 

This diplomatic statement, which committed France 

III 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to nothing, was conveyed in a mere note to the Ameri- 
can minister and was all he had to show the British 
government when he made demand upon them. They 
refused to repeal their Orders until better proof of the 
French repeal was furnished. President Madison, how- 
ever, accepted the note as a repeal of the French Decrees, 
declared our trade with France opened and our trade 
with England closed after the 2d of February, 181 1. 
Napoleon, when he heard of this, directed his cruisers 
to continue to take American vessels violating the De- 
crees ; but his prize courts were not to pass upon these 
captures until the 2d of February, 181 1, when he would 
more explicitly decide the question. 

The 2d of February came and passed, leaving the 
controversy unchanged. On the 28th of April Napo- 
leon repealed the Decrees, but in so obscure a way that 
the news of it was more than a year in reaching America 
and England. Many believed that there never was such 
a repeal ; and in spite of the repeal Napoleon's cruisers 
continued to seize our vessels for violating the Decrees. 
In May the American frigate President, in attempting 
to ascertain the nationality of the British cruiser Little 
Belt, brought on an engagement in which the American 
vessel, being superior in guns and men, was the victor. 

This was war. In fact, if we couple with this en- 
gagement the continuous seizure of our ships by Eng- 
land and the capture of our frigate Chesapeake by the 
Leopard four years before, a state of war had existed 
between us and England for a long time. Nevertheless, 
our representatives in Europe kept beating over the same 
old ground with the French and English diplomats for 
another year, going round and round and round the 
same old point, whether the French Decrees had really 
been repealed. Nothing was accomplished. Neither 
England nor Napoleon had the slightest intention of 
allowing anything to be accomplished, and at the end 
of the year, on the i8th of June, 1812, Congress for- 
mally declared war against England, or rather formally 

112 



THE WAR OF 1812 

recognized the war which had existed for some time. 
Five days after the declaration of war the British Orders 
in Council were repealed, apparently on the ground that 
the British government had at last learned that the 
French Decrees had been repealed the year before in 
April, 181 1 ; but the war went on for two years. 

Like the rest of the Federalists, Webster remained 
an opponent of the war all through its course. He be- 
lieved it unnecessary and unjust; he believed that the 
controversies over the orders and decrees and the 
right of search could have been settled by increasing 
our navy or by peaceful means without impoverishing 
the whole mercantile class. 

The Federalist commercial interest was very sensi- 
tive about peace. They believed that peace was abso- 
lutely essential to the advancement of the American 
marine, which our small navy would be utterly unable 
to protect in a war. If we went to war with a Euro- 
pean power, if we even incurrred the enmity of such a 
power, the millions of dollars' worth of American prop- 
erty afloat would be ruined. Above all things, we must 
not provoke the enmity of that greatest of naval powers, 
our rival in the carrying trade. Great Britain. It might 
be true that she at times treated us with contempt, that 
she searched our ships and took from them the sailors 
whom she believed to be her subjects and added them 
to her own crews, that she would seize our ships if she 
found them trading with her enemies, that, in short, 
she denied to us on the ocean that independence that we 
had with difficulty wrested from her on the land. All 
these things, reasoned the Federalists, might be unfor- 
tunate ; but we must submit to them a while longer ; we 
were not powerful enough to resist them. If we could 
onlv keep the peace a while longer our commerce and 
trade would grow to such proportions and power that 
all such questions would settle themselves by the natural 
force of events. 

The Massachusetts Federalists worked themselves up 

8 113 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to such a high argument and so habituated themselves 
to behtthng the injuries England had done us that 
they finally announced that only eleven Massachusetts 
sailors had been impressed on board British vessels. 
Why should the whole country go to war about eleven 
vagabond sailors, who were probably foreigners after 
all, and originally natives of England, Ireland or Scot- 
land? 

The embargo, said the New England Federalists, 
was a conspiracy between the South and the West to 
ruin the East. The South and West despised the com- 
merce of the East and were jealous of its power. The 
embargo had been dictated by France out of hostility 
to England that " had done our commerce no essential 
injury." England was " the bulwark of our holy re- 
ligion." England was struggling for her salvation, 
" fighting the battles of Christendom against the French 
anti-Christ and his host." ^ 

Before the embargo on their commerce, the Federal- 
ists had on numerous occasions denounced England's 
impressment of our sailors and searching of our ships, 
and advocated making war upon her. But now Feder- 
alist ship-owners came forward and made long affidavits 
that in all their long experience they had never had any 
sailors impressed or at most only one or two. But there 
seems to have been overwhelming evidence the other 
way. By the investigations of Congress, and of such 
distinguished Federalists as Timothy Pickering and 
Rufus King, before they had decided to turn to the 
English side, it appeared that in the six years previous 
to 1810 there had been 4579 of our people seized by 
British press gangs, of which 1361 were discharged, 
leaving 3218 detained in the British service. In less 
than eighteen months from March, 1803, to August, 
1804, there were, by British admission, 1232 impress- 



' Matthew Carey, " Olive Branch," 7th edition, pp. 141, 
142, 145, 221, 223, 224. 

114 



THE WAR OF 1812 

ments of our people and only forty-nine of them claimed 
by England as British subjects.^ 

It was a horrible form of man-stealing and slavery. 
The poor fellows were imprisoned on British warships 
for life or for years, passed from one ship to another, 
and when the war broke out compelled to fight against 
their own country. Parents, relatives and friends made 
efiforts for rescue, usually unavailing. It was as bad 
as the enslavement of our people by the Moors and 
Barbary pirates. To save our sailors from impress- 
ment the plan was adopted of furnishing them with pro- 
tections or passports, identifying them as American citi- 
zens. But when they presented these the British cap- 
tains tore them in pieces and threw them overboard. 

" I told him I did not belong to his flag and would do no 
work under it. He then ordered my legs to be put in irons, 
and the next morning ordered the master-at-arms to take me 
on deck, and give me two dozen lashes ; after receiving them, 
he ordered him to keep me in irons, and gave me one biscuit 
and one pint of water for twenty-four hours. After keeping 
me in this situation one week I was brought on deck and 
asked by Captain Elliott if I would go to my duty. On my 
refusing, he ordered me to strip, tied me up a second time, 
and gave me two dozen more, and kept me on the same allow- 
ance another week." (Carey, "Olive Branch," 7th edition, pp. 
214, 215.) 

This man, after nine weeks of torture, finally sub- 
mitted, was wounded in an action with a French frigate, 
and after three years of servitude, the American consul 
procured his discharge. The sufferings these men 
would go through for the sentiment of the flag were 
astonishing. Mere jackies, " worthless vagabonds," 
they were, nevertheless, the men who, by their industry 
and skill, had created the vast mercantile wealth on 
which hundreds of American families were living in 
ease and luxury. 

* Matthew Carey, " Olive Branch," 7th edition, pp. 196- 
199, 225, 230, 214, 220, 231, 232, and table preceding title page. 

US 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

When called upon to fight an American vessel they 
would often refuse, or go to the captain and offer to \ 
surrender themselves as prisoners of war. But they 
were usually flogged and forced back to their places j 
with pistols held at their heads. Our poor jacks on the ' 
Peacock, however, had a pleasant revenge when they 
met the Hornet. 

" After the Hornet hoisted American colors, he and the 
other impressed Americans again went to the captain of the 
Peacock and asked to be sent below; said it was an American 
ship ; and that they did not wish to fight against their country. 
The captain ordered us to our quarters; called Midshipman 
Stone to do his duty; and if we did not do our duty, to blow 
our brains out. 'Aye, aye,' was answered by Stone, who then 
held a pistol at my breast, and ordered us to our places. We 
then continued at our places and were compelled to fight till 
the Peacock struck ; and we were liberated after about two 
years and eight months." (Carey, "Olive Branch," 7th edi- 
tion, p. 216.) 

When the Constitution took the Java, thirteen im- 
pressed Americans were found on board of her, and, 
though it seems like an exaggeration, it was estimated 
by the American consul at London, that altogether Eng- 
land had obtained from us by impressment, 14,000 men 
for her navy. 

Like other New Englanders, Webster was himself 
a sufferer from the embargo and other retaliation meas- 
ures of the Democrats. His legal business, like the 
business of other lawyers, fell to a low ebb. But after 
his embargo pamphlet he took no part in politics for 
four years. 

In 1809 he delivered the address before the Phi 
Beta Kappa Society of Dartmouth College. With his 
wife and Mr. and Mrs. Mason he drove by easy stages 
to the college town of Hanover, composing his oration 
at the inns on the journey or during the drive of each 
day, for he had been too busy with the law before 
leaving to make any important preparation. The ad- 
dress was on the " State of our Literature ; " and it is 

116 



THE WAR OF 1812 

better written than the embargo pamphlet. It shov/s 
original thought, and also the change of style that 
association with Mason was bringing about. It was the 
sort of occasional address, the forerunner of the Ply- 
mouth and Bunker Hill orations, with which he after- 
wards attained such distinction. Not the equal of those 
orations in elaborate oratory, in popular appeal, or in 
number of words, its brevity, nevertheless, contains 
ideas which are rather more interesting to the cultivated 
mind to-day than anything in those famous orations. 
Those orations, after all, in order to be popular, had to 
be something of a return to the old screeching style of 
oratory which Webster in his heart despised. 

Literature, he says in this Phi Beta Kappa address, 
cannot spring up in the soil of uncultivated minds. 
Learning is not the spontaneous, self-planted oak of the 
forest. It is the plant of our gardens ; and there had 
not yet been enough garden culture for it in America. 
There must be a demand for literature before it will 
appear. Genius will not display itself unpatronized and 
unregarded. It is coy and will be wooed. We had not 
yet turned our energies to these things of the mind. 
Although we were a nation of farmers, we had not yet 
established agricultural societies for comparing farmers' 
ideas. We had no historical societies to preserve the 
records of the past. 

" It has indeed been said that America is yet too young 
to imbibe an ardor for letters ; that she can hardly expect 
even works of mediocrity for years yet to come ; that seven 
centuries from the foundation of Rome were scarcely sufficient 
to produce Horace and Virgil, Hortensius and Cicero; that 
when as many years have rolled by, from the landing of our 
fathers, as from Romulus to Augustus, we may then expect 
great poets, orators and historians. No reasons from analogy 
can apply among nations so entirely dissimilar. Rome set 
out in the career of national existence completely barbarous. 
She got up out of her cradle an infant savage, with all the 
wolf in her blood. She was profoundly ignorant of first 
elements. She began at her alphabet. America, on the con- 
trary, commenced her existence at a time when the sources 

117 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of knowledge were unfolded, and the human mind was bound- 
ing forward in the path of improvement. Her first colonists 
were scholars. Raleigh, Smith, Penn, Robinson are not names 
found in the first page of Roman history." 

I 

His forecast for American literature was fulfilled. 
When he spoke we had, you may say, no literature ; but 
before he died in 1852, Longfellow, Holmes, Poe, Irving, 
Prescott, Motley, Parkman, Irving, Hawthorne, Lowell, 
and the rest of his great contemporaries had made their 
mark and he himself was counted as a part of that 
literature. 

In a word, literature came in spite of the causes 
working against it, which were, he said, our inor- 
dinate devotion to money-catching and our love of petty 
local politics. It was not politics as a science, the 
science of government, which was injurious, but the low 
contentious forms of it. 

" Let ambitious genius beware, how it plants itself on the 
arid soil of political contention." 

He was evidently looking about for the phases of 
American life that favored or did not favor distinction. 
Ordinary politics were against it. Journalism was 
against it. His opinion of the journalism of that time 
was not a respectful one. In France a career in journal- 
ism has been usually regarded as favorable to literary 
talent aspiring for the best ; but in this country the 
opposite opinion has usually been held. 

Webster, with a consciousness of his powers, had 
naturally an eye to distinction. He regarded politics 
and even law in that light more than in any other. 
Writing to his son many years afterwards, he tells him 
that the career of an ordinary lawyer is far from desir- 
able ; and if no pathway to high distinction is seen in 
the law, it were better let alone. 

It is curious to find him enlarging on these thoughts 
in his Phi Beta Kappa address at the age of twenty- 
seven when we remember how well and how carefully 

118 




WEBSTER AS A YOUNG MAN 
(Artist unknown) 



THE WAR OF 1812 

he cultivated his Hterary taste and formed his style on 
the great masters of speech, though deep in both poHtics 
and law all the time. He always succeeded in keep- 
ing them from interfering. His contemporaries were 
always struck by his remarkable power of separating 
things, of turning from one to the other, and dismissing 
completely the first. He could argue a case in the 
Supreme Court and fulfil every technical and customary 
requirement of the art ; and the next hour make an 
excellent speech in the Senate requiring such a totally 
different manner and point of view, that in the Senate 
good lawyers were often inferior to half-educated 
back-woodsmen. 

Webster became one of the greatest examples of high 
Hterary taste and genius successfully applied to law and 
politics ; and when we read the debates of the Senate 
in Jackson's time, and in the mass of forgotten coarse- 
ness, crudity and mediocrity find Webster's classic 
speeches standing out and surviving untainted by the 
pollution, we begin to see how the ideal of the youth 
was carried out by the man. 

He was not in politics yet of any kind. But three 
years afterwards in July, 1812, just after the declara- 
tion of war, the clock struck and his hour had come. 
He delivered the Fourth of July address before the 
Washington Benevolent Society of Portsmouth. In 
regulation partisan style he assailed the war and the 
Democratic administration. We had built up a mag- 
nificent commerce since the Revolution, and if our navy 
had been kept up instead of being sacrificed to the 
economical ideas of farmer Democrats, England would 
never have ventured to have enforced her Orders in 
Council or her supposed right of search. 

"If the plan of Washington had been pursued, and our 
navy had been suffered to grow, as it naturally would have 
done, with the growth of our commerce and navigation, what 
a blow might at this moment be struck, and what protection 
yielded, surrounded as our commerce now is with the dangers 
of sudden war." 

119 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER . 

But instead of building up the navy, the Democrats 
had allowed one part of it to rot and had sold another 
part at auction to help their too economical treasury until 
it was reduced to only twelve frigates and five smaller 
vessels. 

The war, Webster went on to say, was causeless; 
there was more reason for war with France. France 
had begun the restrictions on neutrals. There could 
have been no such war as this in Washington's time. 
He understood commerce ; he knew that the Constitution 
had been primarily adopted to encourage commerce. 
Commerce was the hope of America. It had made the 
country, paid its Revolutionary debt, was its hope for 
the future, and the bond of union that held the States 
together. " To call upon us now to forsake the 
seas, to forget the virtues of the magnet, to lose even 
the observance and guidance of the stars, is to summon 
us to repeal at once, as well the constitution of civilized 
man, and the laws of nature, as the Constitution of the 
country." 

Worst of all, as we had no navy, the end of this 
democratic .war would be to force us into an alliance 
with France as a last resort to save ourselves from 
British conquest. And then he launched forth into the 
horrors of such a connection, an abomination to which 
New England would never submit. Rather than see 
the unhallowed hosts of France spread over their pater- 
nal fields all New Englanders would commit suicide. 
" There is no common character, nor can there be a 
common interest between the Protestants, the Dissenters, 
the Puritans of New England, and the Papists, the In- 
fidels and the Atheists of France ; or between our free 
republican institutions and the most merciless tyranny 
that ever heaven suffered to afflict mankind." 

It is easy to understand that in a community like 
Portsmouth, strongly ship-owning and Federalist, the 
delivery of such an oration was a very distinct proof 
that young Webster could be put to other uses than 

120 



THE WAR OF 1812 

the practice of the law. At least so the Federalists of 
Portsmouth thought. The Democrats would have kept 
Webster in private life and some criticisms of him from 
a Democratic source in Plumer's reminiscences may be 
useful. 

"The first notice I find of Mr. Webster in my journal is 
under date of August, 1810: Webster is a young man under 
thirty. As a speaker merely he is perhaps the best at the bar. 
His language is correct, his gestures good ; and his deHvery 
slow, articulate and distinct. He excels in the statement of 
facts; but he is not thought to be a deep-read lawyer. His 
manners are not pleasing — being haughty, cold and overbear- 
ing. . . . September 8, 1812, Charles Cutts, who was here 
a few days since, informed me that at the meetings of the 
Washington Benevolent Society of Portsmouth, Daniel Web- 
ster regularly delivers political lectures to the Society, and 
that he is getting a great influence there. . . . Webster 
has talent equal to any office; but he is as malignant as Robes- 
pierre and not less tyrannical ! Party feeling was at this time 
very strong and virulent ; and in these party strifes, Mr. Web- 
ster's blows fell too fast and heavy not to inspire equal dread 
and resentment in his opponents. It must be admitted, too, 
that his manner at this time was like Wolsey's, ' lofty and sour 
to them that loved him not.'" (Works, National Edition, vol. 
xvi, pp. 546, 547-) 

One reason they loved him not was because the 
Judges had been all Democrats and when Webster's 
Federalists got into power they reorganized the courts, 
turned out all the Democratic Judges and put Federalist 
Judges in their places. Webster had shown some of his 
early command of language by denouncing the igno- 
rance and stupidity of the Democratic Judges. 

In after years association with the great world in 
Washington changed Webster's lofty Federalist manner 
and he became one of the most affable of public men. 
Soon after his speech before the Washington Benevo- 
lent Society, he was appointed at the head of a commit- 
tee that took charge of a mass meeting of the Federalists 
of Rockingham County, in which Portsmouth was situ- 
ated. The meeting was called to protest against the 
war ; and the document sent by it to President Madison 

121 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

was known as the Rockingham Memorial and was 
written by Webster. 

It contained not a little of that power of argument 
which characterized his maturer years. There are pass- 
ages in it that almost convince us that the old Federal- 
ists may have been right. It beat over the old ground 
that the war was unjust; that its supposed cause, the 
impressment of American sailors, was greatly exag- 
gerated ; there were numerous ship-owners and captains 
in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts who in 
twenty years' experience had never lost a single native 
American sailor by impressment ; the States in favor of 
the war were the States that had no seamen, while those 
that had three-fourths of all the mariners were voting 
by great majorities against the war ; the neighbors, the 
friends, the relatives of the supposed impressed sailors, 
the sailors themselves, that were at home, were all 
voting against the war. England claimed no right 
to impress our seamen, but only her own subjects, and 
was willing to adjust all difficulties amicably ; the coun- 
try was unprepared for war ; there was no navy to pro- 
tect it; and when the commercial States originally 
accepted the Constitution it was on the understanding 
that their interests should be protected by an adequate 
navy; this had not been fulfilled and the failure might 
break up the Union. As for an alliance with France 
New England would have no part in it, and would 
treat French troops as enemies. 

The passage which enforced the hints about danger 
to the Union was often afterwards quoted by the defen- 
ders of secession. 

"We are, sir, from principle and habit, attached to the 
union of the States. But our attachment is to the substance, 
and not to the form. It is to the good which this union is 
capable of producing, and not to the evil which is suffered 
unnaturally to grow out of it. . . . 

" We shrink from the separation of the States, as an event 
fraught with incalculable evils, and it is among our strongest 
objections to the present course of measures, that they have, in 

122 



I 



THE WAR OF 1812 

our opinion, a very dangerous and alarming bearing on such 
an event. If a separation of the States ever should take place, 
it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country- 
undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest 
of another; when a small and heated majority in the govern- 
ment, taking counsel of their passions, and not of their reason, 
contemptuously disregarding the interests and perhaps stopping 
the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall, by hasty, 
rash, and ruinous measures, threaten to destroy essential rights 
and lay waste the most important interests. 

" It shall be our most fervent supplication to heaven to 
avert both the event and the occasion ; and the government may 
be assured that the tie that binds us to the union will never 
be broken by us." 

These hints were certainly not altogether consistent 
with Webster's argtinients in later life. But there had 
been all sorts of talk about secession ever since the adop- 
tion of the Constitution. It was a common partisan 
argument of the time that unless so and so were done 
"the American Union must be dissolved." In 181 1 in 
a debate in the Senate on a bill to admit the territory of 
Orleans as a State, Josiah Quincy declared that if the 
bill passed it would be the right as well as the duty of 
some States to " prepare definitely for separation, ami- 
cably if they can, violently if they must." 

Those few words " amicably if they can, violently if 
they must," contain the theory, the two methods of 
separation, which prevailed at that time. The first, 
or amicable, method was for the discontented States 
or section to come to an agreement with the other 
States on some plan of break-up or separation arrang- 
ing the conditions and details. That is to say, all 
the States should come together again and make, in 
effect, a new Constitution, or if you please, amend the 
Constitution so as to let the discontented States leave 
the Union. The violent plan was simply that the dis- 
contented section should exercise the right of revolu- 
tion, declare itself independent, refuse obedience to the 
general government, and, if necessary, maintain that 
position with the sword. The New Englanders do not 

123 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

seem to have maintained at that time that the Consti- 
tution itself, by its own terms, gave a State either the 
legal right to secede or the legal right to annul objection- 
able acts of Congress. They seem to have regarded 
the Constitution as binding the States together into a 
union that could be broken only by common consent 
or by violence and revolution. The idea that the Con- 
stitution itself allowed nullification and secession as 
legal rights under the Constitution was not put forth 
until some ten or fifteen years afterwards and then not 
by the New Englanders but by the South Carolinians. 
But returning to the instances of discussion of this 
subject of dissolution in that period, we find that in 
1803, when Spain suspended our right of deposit of 
merchandise at New Orleans, contrary, as was believed, 
to the treaty, there was a great cry for war among the 
Federalists. The Boston Sentinel for January 17th 
contained the statement that " the free navigation of the 
river (the Mississippi) must be preserved to that portion 
of the American people or the American empire must 
be dismembered." In the " Life and Letters of George 
Cabot," Senator Lodge has given with considerable 
fulness the discussions which took place about this time 
among leading Federalists in Congress — Pickering, 
Griswold, Tracy, Plumer, Hellhouse and others — on 
the advisability of forming a Northern Confederacy 
to include New England, New York, and perhaps Penn- 
sylvania, New Jersey, and Canada. Their reason for 
this was disgust with the JefTersonian Democracy then 
in power. Pickering, as in the following letter, was 
quite outspoken on the subject. 

"And must we submit to these evils . . . The most 
intelligent of the Federalists here have been reflecting on this 
subject with the deepest concern. Massachusetts, as the most 
powerful, they say, should take the lead. At the word from 
her, Connecticut would instantly join. There can be no doubt 
of New Hampshire. Rhode Island would follow of necessity. 
There would probably be no great difficulty in bringing in 
Vermont. But New York should also concur; and, as she 

124 



THE WAR OF 1812 

might be made the centre of the northern union, it can hardly 
be supposed that she would refuse her assent. New Jersey 
would assuredly become an associate ; and it is to be wished 
that Pennsylvania, at least east of the Susquehanna, might 
be induced to come into the confederacy. At no distant 
period the British Provinces on the north and northeast would 
probably become a part of the northern union. I think Great 
Britain would not object; for she would continue to derive 
from them, when become States, all the commercial advan- 
tages they would yield if continued her provinces, without the 
expense of governing and defending them.' (Life and Letters 
of George Cabot, p. 445.) 

" Although the end of all our Revolutionary labors and 
expectations is disappointment, and our fond hopes of Repub- 
lican happiness are vanity, and the real patriots of '76 are 
overwhelmed by the modern pretenders to that character, I 
will not yet despair. I will rather anticipate a new confeder- 
acy, exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and 
oppression of the aristocratic Democrats of the South. There 
will be (and our children at farthest will see it) a separation. 
The white and black population will mark the boundary. The 
British provinces, even with the assent of Britain, will become 
members of the northern confederacy. A continued tyranny 
of the present ruling sect will precipitate that event." (Life 
and Letters of George Cabot, p. 441.) 

These Federalists tried to bring to their plan other 
Federalists, but without success ; and Alexander Hamil- 
ton's refusal is noteworthy. 

" I will here express but one sentiment : which is that 
dismemberment of our empire will be a clear sacrifice of great 
positive advantages, without any counterbalancing good ; ad- 
ministering no relief to our real disease, which is democracy; 
the poison of which by a subdivision will only be the more 
virulent." (Works, vi, p. 568.) 

It was very natural that the advantages and disad- 
vantages of the union should have been freely discussed 
at that period when the union under the Constitution 
was not a generation old and still, in the opinion of 
many, an experiment. 

Going back to 1796 we find the Hartford Courant 
assailing the South, saying that if the slaves were fit 
for food the Southerners would eat them, and that the 

125 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

union would be an impossibility for any long period in 
the future.* 

" We have reached a critical period in our political exist- 
ence. The question must soon be decided, whether we will 
continue a nation at the expense even of our union, or sink 
with the present mass of difficulty into confusion and slavery." 

"Many advantages were supposed to be secured and 
many evils avoided by a union of the States. I shall not deny 
that the supposition was well founded. But at that time those 
advantages and those evils were magnified to a far greater 
size than either would be if the question was at this moment 
to be settled. 

" The northern states can subsist as a nation, a republic, 
without any connection with the southern.'' 

Going further back, we find that in the convention 
that framed the Constitution, there was a minority 
party that wanted to continue the old league under the 
Articles of Confederation with a few amendments. 
They protested against a national government, but they 
were voted down by the majority. When the Consti- 
tution was offered to the people for adoption, we find 
a minority here and there objecting because it made 
too strong a government, a government that was not a 
league of States like the old confederation. Some 
prominent men like Luther Martin, of Maryland, voted 
against the adoption of the Constitution because it 
created a national government and took away so much 
of the independent sovereignty of the States. On the 
other hand, the advocates for adoption, like Johnson 
and Ellsworth in Connecticut, and the writers in the 
Federalist, recommended the Constitution because it 
was not a league of States, because it acted upon indi- 
viduals and not upon States, and because it created a 
nation. 

With these two parties pointing out with the clear- 
est distinctness that the Constitution, if adopted, would 
create an indissoluble union, the majority of the States, 

* M. Carey, " Olive Branch," 7th edition, pp. 246, 269, 271, 
272; Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, vol. iv, p. 327. 

126 



THE WAR OF 1812 

with their eyes open to what the Constitution really was, 
adopted it as it came from the convention that framed 
it; and that convention in submitting it to the people 
of the States had reminded them that it was intended 
to consolidate the union. Legally and constitutionally 
there was, therefore, never any room to doubt that no 
State under the Constitution had a right to nullify the 
laws of the Congress, or, what was the same thing, 
peacefully secede from the union. If a State or a num- 
ber of States chose to secede by force, or by the right 
of revolution as it is called, an inalienable right re- 
tained by all communities, that was of course an entirely 
different question outside of the pale of legal argiunent. 

As there had been a minority opposed to the adop- 
tion of the Constitution because it created what was 
then called a consolidated union, there was very natur- 
ally for several generations after a minority here and 
there that, when dissatisfied, would talk about secession. 
The Federalists of New England threatened it in 
1796, in 1803, and in 18 12.^ The South Carolinians 
threatened it in 1830, in 1833, and led the other South- 
ern States into a war for it in 1861. In all cases it was 
a minority. The majority of the people of the country, 
like the majority that adopted the Constitution, have 
always regarded that instrument as doing exactly what 
its words import ; creating an indissoluble union that 
could not be broken by any peaceful methods. 

Webster finally became the most illustrious advocate 
of the indissoluble union. But at present he is with 
one of those minorities that were looking the other way. 
As the war went on and New England commerce suf- 



" In 1821 the Richmond Enquirer recommended a punish- 
ment for persons who should attempt to enforce judgments of 
the Supreme Court or Acts of Congress within the State 
of Virginia, and in the same year the Legislature of Ohio 
taxed the Bank of the United States. Jervey, Life of Hayne, 
pp. 115, 116. See also the same author, pp. 35-40, for another 
instance. 

127 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

fered greater and greater devastation, the people talked 
disunion more than ever. 

It had been really a very fine thing, that New Eng- 
land commercial ascendency ; that ship-owning aristoc- 
racy, with its generously built and noble old houses; 
its romantic influences of trade with the whole world; 
its cargoes and wild adventures from India and China ; 
the vigor and freshness of the " gay green sea," and 
the sailor's inspiring life. The New Englanders knew 
how to turn all this picturesqueness to account in their 
lives much better than the New Yorkers or the Caro- 
linians. They described it and gave it a fascinating 
literary form. They filled their homes with its spoils 
and treasures. Old families grew more wealthy and 
refined. New families were coming on in the same 
path. 

It was the sort of conservatism of education, wealth, 
and intellect that was always particularly attractive to 
Webster; and when its foundation, that is, its wealth, 
was being knocked from under it by the Democrats' war 
with England, the outcry resounded on all sides. There 
were heavy losses and great suffering ; there is no use in 
denying it ; and New England literary ability is able 
to make an outcry very vivid. There were many pros- 
perous ship-owning merchants at that time in New 
York, Philadelphia, and Charleston ; but Boston exalted 
the picturesque ideal of the New England merchant and 
his misfortunes beyond all others. 

Not to dwell too long on this unpleasant period. New 
England began to do very naughty things. Several of 
her more reckless ministers of the Gospel preached 
secession from the pulpit. The Sentinel, the Repertory, 
and the Boston Gazette advocated it, and declared the 
union already practically dissolved. Regarding herself 
as entirely separated from the Democratic administra- 
tion and its war. New England established a regular 
system of trade with the public enemy. The British 
army and navy were supplied with cattle and provisions 
driven over the line into Canada. Everything possible 

128 



THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

was done to defeat the war loan of the government. 
Attempts were made to draw the specie from the banks 
south of New England, Those in Boston who were 
willing to subscribe to the war loan were so overawed 
by public opinion that they had to make their subscrip- 
tions in secret. The British ministry, thinking a great 
opportunity might have arrived, sent a Canadian lawyer, 
John Henry, to New England to report how near the 
country was ripe for revolt and union with Canada. 
The English fleet blockaded the whole of our coast 
except New England. The Democratic Congress 
passed the Embargo Act of 1813 because they believed 
that New England, unblockaded, was trading with 
Great Britain and supplying with provisions the fleets 
and armies that were invading America. 

This last embargo act roused New England indig- 
nation more than ever. They believed the country 
ruined ; the war after two years seemed hopeless of suc- 
cess ; our little navy, in spite of its first victories, had dis- 
appeared from the ocean ; the army was defeated and 
useless ; England preparing for heavy invasion ; New 
England unprotected ; the general government bankrupt; 
and with the government in the hands of such people as 
the Democrats it was a curse rather than a blessing. 
Accordingly the Massachusetts legislature, by an over- 
whelmingly large vote, called a convention of all New 
England. A picked body of the most respectable and 
conservative Federalists, twelve from Massachusetts, 
seven from Connecticut, four from Rhode Island, two 
from New Hampshire, and one from' Vermont, met in 
what has ever since been known as the Hartford Con- 
vention of 1814, which sat with doors closed to the 
public and discussed the troubles of the time.® 

A great deal of argument has been written for and 

" See generally Life and Letters of George Cabot and M. 
Carey's Olive Branch, 7th edition, pp. 298. 303-308, 310, 311, 
316, 322-327, 351. 354, 441, 449-457; McMaster, History of the 
People of the United States, vol. iv, pp. 222, 229, 251 ; Webster, 
Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 193. 
9 129 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

against this convention. But it is better to quote their 
own language and opinions on the question of secession, 
and in the report they pubhshed there are two passages 
on this question. The Constitution, they said, had been 
a most successful instrument of government under Fed- 
eralist administration ; but with the Democrats in power 
an unjust war had been begun which was ruining New 
England. But they would be patient and not on this 
account dissolve the union. 

" If the union be destined to dissolution by reason of the 
multiplied abuses of bad administrations, it should, if possible, 
be the work of peaceable times and deliberate consent. Some 
new form of confederacy should be submitted among those 
States which shall in time maintain a federal relation to each 
other. Events may prove that the causes of our calamities 
are deep and permanent. They may be found to proceed, not 
merely from the blindness of prejudice, pride of opinion, vio- 
lence of party spirit or the confusion of the times ; but they 
may be traced to implacable combinations of individuals, or 
of States, to monopolize power and office, and to trample 
without remorse upon the rights and interests of commercial 
sections of the union. Whenever it shall appear that these 
causes are radical and permanent, a separation, by equitable 
arrangement, will be preferable to an alliance by constraint, 
among nominal friends, but real enemies, inflamed by mutual 
hatred and jealousy, and inviting, by intestine divisions, con- 
tempt and aggression from abroad. But a severance of the 
union by one or more States, against the will of the rest, and 
especially in a time of war, can be justified only by absolute 
necessity." (D wight, History of the Hartford Convention, 
P- 355-) 

They then go on to show that the method of the 
Democratic administration in dividing up the country 
into districts for calling out the militia, and leaving the 
calling of them within the discretion of the President, 
was a violation of the Constitution, by which the militia 
could be converted by the President into a standing 
army to destroy the liberties of the States. They were 
wrong in their law, however, for the Supreme Court 
afterwards held that the President had this discretionary 
power of calling out the militia. They go on to say : 

130 



THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

" That acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution 
are absolutely void, is an undeniable position. It does not, 
however, consist with respect and forbearance due from a 
confederate State towards the general government to fly to 
open resistance upon every infraction of the Constitution. The 
mode and the energy of the opposition should always conform 
to the nature of the violation, the intention of its authors, the 
extent of the injury inflicted, the determination manifested to 
persist in it, and the danger of delay. But in cases of delib- 
erate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, 
affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of the people, 
it is not only the right, but the duty of such a State to inter- 
pose its authority for their protection, in the manner best 
calculated to secure that end. When emergencies occur which 
are either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunals, or too 
pressing to admit of the delay incident to their forms. States 
which have no common umpire, must be their own judges, 
and execute their own decisions." (Dwight, History of the 
Hartford Convention, p. 361.) 

But we must wait, they say, and see what shall 
be the " ultimate disposal " of all the obnoxious meas- 
ures of the administration before deciding how to pro- 
tect our rights and liberties. In fact, they say that any 
ultimate measure about disunion must be left to an- 
i other convention, to be afterwards called, if necessary. 
They recommend a bargain or agreement to be made 
with the general government by which New England 
could assume her own defense with her own troops ; that 
the Constitution be amended so that the representatives 
in Congress from the South shall be in proportion to 
the number of free inhabitants and not on the basis 
of both free inhabitants and slaves ; that no new State 
be admitted to the union without the concurrence of 
two-thirds of both Houses of Congress ; that Congress 
shall not have power to lay any embargo, or to declare 
war or interdict commerce, except by a two-thirds vote ; 
that only native-born citizens shall hold office ; that the 
President shall not be eligible to election a second time, 
nor a President be elected from the same State two 
terms in succession. 

This is in substance all that the convention did or 

131 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

proposed to do. The suspicion that in addition to 
these pubHc announcements they plotted secretly to 
separate New England from the union has never been 
proved, remains a mere suspicion, and must here be 
dismissed with that, because it is more important in 
view of Webster's later career to consider the theory 
of the convention's disunion doctrines which may be 
briefly summarized. 

1. What the}' say about States being entitled to be their 
own judges, when they have no common umpire and there is 
a deliberate, dangerous, and palpable violation of the Con- 
stitution, is taken from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions 
adopted by the Democrats when the Federalists were in power^ 
and were pressing the Democrats hard with the alien anc 
sedition laws. In other words, in those days any party that 
was pinched was apt to say, stop pinching me or I won't plaj 
any more. I will quit the game, go out of the union. This 
as Webster often afterwards pointed out, is not any theory of 
constitutional nullification or secession, does not rest for sup- 
port on the words of the Constitution, but is a right outside 
of the Constitution and outside of all constitutions, is, in short, 
merely the right of revolution never denied by anyone, embodied 
in the Declaration of Independence, and not questioned in our 
time. Any State or community of people have the right, of 
course, to break away from intolerable tyranny or persecution 
and take their chances of a war over it. 

2. The other method of separation the convention describes 
as " separation by equitable arrangement ; " that is, by the 
agreement and consent of the other States coming together 
again and making a new constitution, or amending the old 
one so as to let the discontented ones depart in peace. The 
convention also seems to have been of the opinion that the 
Supreme Court is the proper tribunal for settling these serious 
questions, if they can be settled without resorting to the other 
methods. That was afterwards part of Webster's argument 
in the nullification debates of 1830 and 1833 ; and he pointed 
out that the Massachusetts Federalists had lived up to this 
doctrine by taking the Embargo Act before the Supreme Court 
to test its constitutionality, and when the court in 1808 de- 
cided it constitutional, accepting that decision. 

3. This doctrine is quite different from the southern doc- 
trines of nullification and secession. The southerners denied 
the authority of the Supreme Court to settle these questions 
of sovereignty. They did not rely on the right of revolution, 

133 



THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

or on " separation by equitable arrangement," but declared 
that a State had the legal right to nullify objectionable acts 
of Congress and yet remain in the union ; and later, that a 
State had the legal right peacefully to secede from the union 
of its own accord and without the consent of the other States. 

In 1850 there was another outbreak of disunion 
sentiment in New England among the aboHtionists 
because the Constitution guaranteed that slavery in 
the southern States should not be interfered with. The 
Constitution, the abolitionists declared, was " a covenant 
with death and a league with hell ; " it was, they said, 
not worth preserving; and in order to get rid of that 
infamous guaranty they announced themselves ready to 
dissolve the union, or let the South dissolve the union, 
or do anything to be rid of the Constitution and its 
guaranty of slavery. That was their method of separa- 
tion. 

All this somewhat detailed consideration of the dis- 
union opinions of the time and the reasoning of the 
convention will help us to a better understanding of 
Webster's position in the famous nullification contro- 
versy some fifteen years afterwards. 

He had nothing to do with the Hartford Convention, 
although in after years great efforts were made to try 
to connect his name with it or show that he had ap- 
proved of it. He always said that he had disapproved 
of it. He was in Congress at the time, and remained 
in Washington until after the convention had adjourned. 

If he should return to us and we could have him 
down at Marshfield in his old haunts, at a good dinner, 
he would, no doubt, assure us in his most amiable and 
convincing way that the Hartford Convention and all 
the other dissolution talk in New England was mere 
froth and excitement, a passing excitement caused by 
the strain and heavy losses of the war and the embar- 
goes, and that the New England people and their leaders 
had never had the slightest intention of real secession 
or anything like it ; that they had taken the Embargo Act 

133 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

before the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality, 
and when that tribunal had declared it constitutional 
they had had nothing more to say. In fact, he said the 
equivalent of this in his reply to Hayne ; and the re- 
ports of John Henry, the British emissary, afterwards 
published in Matthew Carey's " Olive Branch," bear 
him out. That worthy person reported to the British 
ministry an imiTiense amount of excitement, talk and 
threatening. But although he went up and down and 
all through New England seeking for something more 
definite, he finally concluded that there was no real 
intention to break away and no ground for expecting 
a real revolt. 

Nevertheless, this excitement of sectionalism and 
provincialism put Webster into national politics. The 
Rockingham meeting which adopted the memorial he 
had prepared also nominated him for Congress, and he 
took his seat in May, 1813. No doubt it may have been 
part of his mission and training that he should be 
involved with this side that he might be the more com- 
petent in later years to argue the other. The first study 
of the great defender of the union was to learn how 
to destroy it for the sake of the sanctified provincial 
merchant. But he grew, he developed, he graduated 
from that narrow ideal into the broader field of the 
union and the Constitution one and inseparable. 

" When a seat in Congress was first suggested to him 
he was inclined to decline because ' he was poor and must 
attend to his business as a lawyer.' 

" The next day Judge Smith received a letter from him 
dated at N. Stratham, on his way down to Portsmouth, saying 
that on the whole he should not decline a seat if elected. As 
to the law, he added, ' I must attend to that too, — but honor 
is, after all, worth more than money.' ' The impudent dog 
that he is,' said Smith afterwards, in relating the story, ' he 
does not know the value of money, and never will. No matter, 
he was born for something better than hoarding money bags." 
(Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvii, p. 547.) 

In Congress, Webster's most conspicuous efifort was 
directed to securing the passage of a set of resolutions 

134 



THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

calling on Madison's administration to explain when 
and how the repeal of the French decrees had been 
communicated to our government. The answer re- 
vealed, or more correctly, made certain, that there really 
had been a repealing decree ; but it had not been re- 
ceived by our government until more than a year after 
its date and nearly a month after the declaration of war. 
The administration had acted in its negotiations with 
England and in the declaration of war merely on the 
original vague French note, which only suggested that 
there might possibly, at some time, be such a repealing 
decree. 

Napoleon astutely arranged it so that the door should 
be open and the door should be shut. He had finally 
issued a repealing decree ; no one could say that he had 
not kept his word ; but he had so managed that its exist- 
ence should not be known until America and England 
were committed to war; and at the same time he con- 
tinued to seize American ships as if there had been no 
repealing of the decrees. So the debate raged anew in 
Congress, whether we should have gone to war with 
France instead of with England ; or, as some said, " gone 
to war with them both." 

Webster steadily voted and spoke against pretty 
much all the administration measures. He voted against 
the taxes. He voted and spoke against the bill for the 
compulsory draft of men for the army on the ground 
that only the States had the right to make such a draft. 
He used strong language against it, declaring that such 
a bill threatened " the dissolution of the government," 
and that it would be " the solemn duty of the State gov- 
ernments to protect their own authority over their own 
militia and to interpose between their citizens and arbi- 
trary power." It was one of the measures the Hart- 
ford Convention complained of as unconstitutional and 
dangerous. It was generally unpopular, and the efforts 
of Webster and others defeated it. Their legal argu- 
ments against its constitutionality were plausible and 
strong ; but the opposite opinion now prevails, especially 

135 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

since the Civil War, and conscription and compulsory 
drafts by the general government are regarded as en- 
tirely constitutional and a necessary part of the national 
government's power/ 

Webster also opposed the various plans of the Demo- 
crats for creating a national bank connected with the 
government, and, in fact, for the purpose of making 
loans to the government. His principal reason was 
that they gave the bank power to issue notes not 
redeemable in specie ; and when a bank of the United 
States was finally created, he materially helped his party 
in making it a bank of specie payment. He was always 
unalterably on the side of hard money. 

Webster opposed the plan of carrying on the war 
by invading Canada. It was impossible to conquer that 
land of snow. The war, he said, was avowedly for the 
protection of our maritime rights, and must be confined 
to that alone ; the enemy must be fought only upon the 
ocean. The faith of the nation was pledged to its com- 
merce ; the great purpose for which the government was 
created was the protection of the country's commerce ; 
" in the commerce of the country the Constitution had 
its growth; in the extinction of that commerce it will 
find its grave." 

This was a rather narrow view for his nature, and so 
he instinctively tried to make it broad. If you must 
have war, he said, make it on the ocean. Turn from 
your inland border and look with the eye of justice and 
compassion on your vast population along the coast. If 
you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go 
to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. 
Turn the current of your energ)' to the navy ; increase, 
enlarge it, strengthen it. There the united wishes and 
exertions of the whole nation will follow you. Even 
our party divisions cease at the water's edge. In pro- 

* Works, National Edition, vol. xiv, pp. 57, 68 ; Desty, Fed- 
eral Constitution, p. 99; Story, on the Constitution, sth edition, 
section iiQSn. 

136 



THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

tecting naval interests by naval means you will arm 
yourselves with the whole power of national sentiment 
and may command the whole abundance of the national 
resources. 

It was a beautiful ideal, that if the w^ar became a 
purely naval war for the glory of the ocean, it would 
cease to be a party war and would become a war of the 
whole people. So the policy which, at the start, seems 
narrow, is made to seem in his subtle hands a broad 
VVebsterian policy after all. 

At home, in New Hampshire, the Democrats, espe- 
cially Isaac Hill, editor of the New Hampshire Patriot, 
had quite an unfavorable opinion of Webster which, in 
after years, greatly delighted the abolitionists. Webster 
talked too much ^n Congress, said Hill, and " a fool 
is known by his much speaking." " The self-impor- 
tance and gross egotism he displays are disgusting. 
You would suppose him a great merchant living in a 
maritime city, and not a man reared in the woods of 
Salisbury or educated in the wilds of Hanover." His 
brazen confidence and volubility were mistaken for pre- 
eminent talent. He was trying to dissolve the union 
and set the North against the South. 

We cannot discuss the details of the war in this 
volume. Our small armies were for a time badly offi- 
cered, badly handled, and badly beaten. The Chesa- 
peake region was invaded by the enemy, who burned 
the Capitol at Washington, the President's house, and 
other public buildings. Later in the war, with reor- 
ganized forces under General Jacob Brown, a Pennsyl- 
vania, Bucks County Quaker, of natural military genius, 
and with Jackson's victory at New Orleans, we did very 
much better. But the point where we unexpectedly, 
to the surprise of all the Federalists, excelled and won 
imperishable renown for the nation, was at sea. 

Against England's thousand frigates our twelve 
seemed a monstrous absurdity; and the government 
thought at one time of forbidding them to leave port. 

137 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

But time, as Paul Jones used to say, makes all things 
even ; and the vast stretches of the ocean sometimes have 
the same effect. A thousand frigates are formidable if 
concentrated upon one point ; they would be formidable 
concentrated upon the twelve, if the twelve would con- 
veniently remain in one place. But scattered over the 
world of waters the thousand could be picked up by 
Napoleonic strategy one by one. Yankee ingenuity and 
daring, the trained American seamanship of a hundred 
years, the native aptitude for speed and marksmanship, 
saw their opportunity. Independently of the moral 
effect, England, still at war with France, could not afford 
to lose a fine frigate here and another there every few 
months, and to keep in the Atlantic several large fleets 
employed in a hopeless chase after these swift and 
unerrinof riflemen of the sea. In six months the Ameri- 
can navy captured as many ships as Great Britain had 
lost in the previous twenty years of European wars. 

Then, too, there were the privateers that swarmed 
out of the Chesapeake, the Delaware, the Sound, and 
the New England bays, with their mocking names, 
"Orders in Council," the "Dove," "Free Trade." 
They were often the equals of the smaller men-of-war, 
and they were sweeping up what was left of British com- 
merce. The captain of the Chasseur, after capturing ,j 
eighty vessels, some of them his superiors in force, and 
clearing the British channel of merchantmen, issued a 
burlesque Orders in Council, declaring the British 
Islands blockaded and forbidding all other nations to 
trade with them. It looked as if, after all, Webster 
might be right. Concentrate upon the ocean and the 
game was ours. Sea power controls the politics of 
the world.^ 

It was somewhat curious that our most success- 
ful captains and crews, both on warships and priva- 
teers, came from Federalist New England opposed 

* Roosevelt, Naval War of 1812; Coggeshall, American 
Privateering. 

138 



THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 

to the war. The EngHsh cruisers in time began 
to seize about as many of our merchantmen as we did 
of theirs, and we were less able to bear such losses. 
But it was a question whether it was worth England's 
while to suffer such heavy losses in addition to the war 
with France, merely for the sake of the supposed right 
of search. All this, however, is another story, Web- 
ster is in Congress, not on the quarter-deck. Many 
eminent men were with him. Henry Clay, Calhoun, and 
the eccentric Randolph of Virginia, are still familiar 
names in history. Then there were Joseph Hopkinson 
and John Sergeant of Pennsylvania, Pinkney of Mary- 
land, Forsyth of Georgia, and a number of others con- 
spicuous in their time. There was, of course, the duel- 
ling set among the southern members ; and Randolph 
boasted of being the best shot in Virginia. Of extra- 
ordinary cleverness in speech and anecdote, of telling 
sarcasm, vituperation and effrontery in debate, incapable 
of sustained logic or legal argument, but something of 
a power in his way, undeniably interesting with his 
thoroughbred saddle horse for himself and an equally 
good one for his negro servant, John Randolph of 
Roanoke, as he always signed himself, was a curious 
and rather sad instance of Virginia intellect gone to 
seed. 

It was inevitable that he should have some differ- 
ence of opinion with Webster in debate, and he sent 
the usual challenge. Webster, as a New Englander, 
despised duelling ; and he wrote a characteristic reply. 

" Sir : For having declined to comply with your demand 
yesterday in the House, for an explanation of words of a 
general nature, used in debate, you now ' demand of me that 
satisfaction which your insulted feelings require,' and refer 

me to your friend, Mr. , I presume, as he is the bearer of 

your note, for such arrangements as are usual. 

"This demand for explanation, you, in my judgment, as a 
matter of right, were not entitled to make on me; nor were 
the temper and style of your own reply to my objection to the 
sugar tax of a character to induce me to accord it as a matter 
of courtesy. 

139 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

" Neither can I, under the circumstances of the case, recog- 
nize in you' a right to call me to the field to answer what 
you may please to consider an insult to your feelings. 

" It is unnecessary for me to state other and obvious con- 
siderations growing out of this case. It is enough that I do 
not feel myself bound, at all times and under any circum- 
stances, to accept from any man, who shall choose to risk his 
own life, an invitation of this sort ; although I shall be always 
prepared to repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any 
man who may presume upon such a refusal. 
" Your obedient servant, 

" Daniel Webster." 

Nothing ever came of the challenge, because so many 
friends of both the men had seen that Randolph had 
no ground for his complaint ; and they united in effect- 
ing an amicable adjustment. 

In 1824 a second misunderstanding occurred between 
Webster and Randolph which was expected to lead to a 
challenge. Randolph regarded his veracity as having 
been questioned. But the affair was patched up by 
Benton and has been discussed in the Preface.^ 

During his service in Congress, Webster lived at 
Crawford's Hotel, in Georgetown, a sort of headquar- 
ters for Federalists. His old friend Mason and his 
preceptor in the law Air. Gore, both in the Senate, and 
also Rufus King, lived there with their wives in a kind 
of state frequently seen in those days ; Mr. Gore and 
Mr. King " keeping a coach and four horses and driving 
every morning to the humble chamber in which the 
Senate met in consequence of the destruction of the 
Capitol by the British." The Federalists clung to these 
old formalities and to the old-fashioned costume and 
powdered hair of the revolutionary period, and were 
much ridiculed for it by the Democrats, who were 
adopting the short hair and the less formal manners and 
dress which have marked our own time. Webster was, 
at this time, making a great study of English politics. 
Volumes of the Annual Register and the Parliamen- 
tary Debates covered his table. 

• Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 102. 

140 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE — KENNISTON TRL\L — CON- 
STITUTIONAL CONVENTION — PLYMOUTH 
ORATION 

The War of 1812 closed with the Treaty of Ghent, 
December 24, 1814, ending hostiHties, but deciding 
nothing as to iinpressirtent, right of search, or orders 
in council, which, however, England never seriously 
insisted upon again. Soon afterwards, the Battle of 
Waterloo, fought in 181 5, ended the wonderful career 
of Napoleon. For fifteen years he had kept all Europe 
at bay; he had made the most important ideas of the 
French Revolution respectable and respected ; he had 
developed military organization and strateg}' beyond all 
previous human calculation ; and turned France into 
a garden of industry and financial prosperity. But he 
had used up her best sons in his wars and made a gap 
in the French stock of men that has never been replaced. 
He was now in the hands of the English tory govern- 
ment, and they would gladly have executed him or 
ordered him out to be shot as an enemy of European 
peace and civilization. But not exactly daring to do 
that, they sent him to exile on the island of St. Helena, 
to be slowly put to death by imprisonment and petty 
humiliating annoyances in its fatal climate. 

So far as we are concerned, let us remember that his 
wars gave us an opportunity for the development of 
commercial wealth, seamanship, and skill in shipbuild- 
ing that we had never had before and that he kept Eng- 
land occupied long enough for us to wrest from her 
our natural rights upon the ocean. His downfall and 
exile and the restoration of the old monarchy to France 
was the end of a long political period of extraordinary 
turmoil and confusion. A totally new period began, new 

141 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

for England and new for America. The high ascend- 
ency of extreme toryism in England, which had been 
kept up by fears of the effects of French liberalism, 
gradually decreased until within less than a generation 
we have a return to power of the English Whig or | 
Liberal party with the reform bill, free trade, and 
other doctrines of the school of Lord Russell and Glad- 
stone. In America, the success of the War of 1812 
helped to continue the Democrats in power for a long 
time. The Federalist party was so unpopular for its J 
course in the war that it disappeared entirely. The | 
questions raised by the war immediately passed away 
and a new set of difficulties, the protective tariff, finan- 
cial and banking problems, internal improvements, pub- 
lic lands, nullification and slavery, took their place, 

Webster remained in Congress only a couple of 
years after the war, closing his service with the session 
that ended on the 3d of March, 18 17. Two questions 
arose towards the end of his service in which his 
conduct was remembered long afterwards ; in fact, 
quoted against him, or for him, to the end of his life. 

One was the protective tariff which was brought up 
in 1814. There was a war tariff of double duties at 
that time, and when this was repealed along with the 
repeal of the embargo and non-intercourse acts a reso- 
lution was passed directing the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury to report at the next session a general tariff of 
duties ; and this resolution, Calhoun said, was a pledge 
that the manufactures which had grown up during the 
war would not be allowed to go unprotected. Webster, 
like other New England Federalists, differed from Alex- 
ander Hamilton and the rest of the Federal party in 
being considerably inclined to free trade because they 
were a community of ship owners. So he debated the 
question with Calhoun, said he was not the enemy of 
manufactures, but at the same time was not for rearing 
them in hotbeds ; " it was the true policy of govern- 
ment to suffer the different pursuits of society to take 

142 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

their own course and not to give excessive bounties or 
encouragements to one over another." 

" I am not anxious to accelerate the approach of the 
period when the great mass of American labor shall not find 
its employment in the field; when the young men of the 
country shall be obliged to shut their eyes upon external 
nature, upon the heavens and the earth, and immerse them- 
selves in close and unwholesome workshops ; when they shall 
be obliged to shut their ears to the bleatings of their own 
flocks upon their own hills, and to the voice of the lark that 
cheers them at the plough, that they may open them in dust 
and smoke and steam to the perpetual whirl of spools and 
spindles and the grating of rasps and saws." 

Those were congenial words to him ; rather his best 
piece of congressional speechmaking so far; and there 
are only a few passages from his writings that have 
been more quoted. 

At the next session, in 1816, Calhoun's promise was 
kept, and a protective tariff bill, advocated also by other 
South Carolina representatives, was introduced and 
passed. It placed a somewhat high duty on cotton and 
woollen goods, iron and hemp, and killed the valuable 
New England trade of importing cotton fabrics from 
India. Webster made no general speech against it on 
general principles, but tried to lower the duties on 
cotton, and also on iron and hemp, which the New 
Englanders wanted to obtain cheap because they were 
so much used in the construction of their ships. 

The other subject in which he became conspicuous 
was in stopping the payment of the government debts 
in the depreciated paper of the State banks instead of 
in coin, treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the 
United States. The custom of paying in depreciated 
paper was a mere bad habit more than anything else, 
though an old one; and was most inconvenient, expen- 
sive, and threatened to be ruinous. Webster's resolu- 
tion and speech, which stopped it, were ever afterward 
remembered to his credit; and are almost the only part 

143 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of his political conduct which his abolitionist constitu- 
ents in New England approved. 

As already related, he had left Portsmouth and 
moved to Boston in August, 1816, for the sake of in- 
creasing his income above the $2,000 a year of his New 
Hampshire practice. He had at first been inclined to 
go to New York as the place where in the "next twenty 
years the great scenes to be enacted in this country are 
to be viewed. Our New England prosperity and im- 
portance are passing away." ^ This was the regulation 
Federalist lament of the time against the war that 
had injured, or destroyed as they said, New England 
commerce. It was not well founded, and Webster, no 
doubt, changed his opinion. 

His home and library in Portsmouth had been de- 
stroyed by fire in 1813, and in the winter of 181 6-1 7 his 
daughter Grace, a precocious, but very charming child, 
died of rapid consumption. These were the domestic 
changes in his life ; and he now, at the age of thirty- 
five, seemed to have bade adieu to political life. The 
political party that had put him into that life was gone 
never to return, and he now entered upon a very pros- 
perous professional career. His career in Congress had 
increased his reputation. He had been retained in some 
important prize cases before the Supreme Court in 
Washington ; business poured in upon him ; and during 
his first year in Boston his fees increased from the 
comparatively trifling $2,000 of his New Hampshire 
practice to the very substantial amount of over $15,000. 

The Boston of that time was a town of only 40,000 
inhabitants. Gardens with shrubs and trees surrounded 
many of the residences. There M'^ere no railroads, 
street railways, telegraph, public lighting, or any of the 
modern wonders, and its water supply came through 
a line of log pipes from Jamaica Pond. The town had 
only four notaries and one savings bank, still elected 

* Correspondence, vol. i, p. 256. 

144 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

two pound keepers, four fence viewers, and three hog- 
reeves ; its directory had a separate hst of " people of 
color," and this was the character of the town for a 
generation and more after Webster came to it. The 
people all knew one another. The upper classes were 
intimate among themselves, learned, keen, seeking 
knowledge from every source and intensely interested 
in literature and every sort of intellectual pursuit. They 
undoubtedly had much to do with building up Webster 
into the remarkable man he became in the next twenty 
years. 

A description of his daily life by his sister-in-law, 
Mrs. Lee, discloses the habits of the time and the dinner 
hour in the middle of the afternoon, a custom extending 
south to Philadelphia down to Civil War times and 
which some people still alive are old enough to 
remember. People either had less to do or got at 
their business earlier; and Webster was a particularly 
early riser, returning to dinner, Mrs. Lee says, " at 
two or three o'clock from the courts or from his office." 
After dinner he would throw himself on the sofa, his 
wife sitting near him, and his children squeezing them- 
selves into all possible places and positions. 

" This was not from invitation to the children ; he did 
nothing to amuse them, he told them no stories ; it was the 
irresistible attraction of his character." (Correspondence, 
vol. i, p. 443-) 

According to Mrs. Lee there was no return to the 
office after dinner. He remained at home the rest of 
the afternoon and evening rather tired, and had appa- 
rently begun his office labor very early in the morning. 

The six years of litigation in all the courts and 
advice of all sorts to all sorts of clients, to which Web- 
ster now devoted himself, cannot be detailed here. But 
there were several employments of a public nature 
which became conspicuous and form an important part 
of his reputation. 

The Dartmouth College case, in which he was re- 
10 145 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

tained on the side of the college, has become such a 
landmark in our constitutional law and constitutional 
history, and its consequences have been so far-reaching, 
that it seems impossible to describe it too often. But 
its details would be less easy to remember and we should 
hear much less of it if some commonplace lawyer had 
won it for the college. Webster touched it with his 
unfailing picturesqueness, and its technical complica- 
tions suddenly assumed, in his hands, a romantic 
interest. 

The college had been founded in 1754, at Lebanon, 
Connecticut, as a charity school for the Indians, by the 
Rev. Dr. Eleazar Wheelock. Its success led to further 
subscriptions, especially in England, for enlarging it 
and opening its doors to students of the white race; 
and for this purpose it was moved to Hanover on the 
Connecticut River, within the State of New Hampshire. 
As the Earl of Dartmouth, secretary for the colonies, 
had been a large subscriber, the college was named 
for him. In 1769 the British Crown granted a charter, 
making of the institution a corporation with a board of 
trustees and a president, in the form familiar to us in 
modem times. Under this charter the college con- 
tinued its existence as a corporation through the Revo- 
lution and down to the year 181 5, when there was 
roused against it some of the democratic and religious 
feeling peculiar to that time. 

This feeling had started some twenty or thirty 
years before at Yale, where there was a party that 
wanted that college put under State control, and finally 
succeeded in accomplishing their purpose in a modified 
form. Dr. John Wheelock, son of the founder of Dart- 
mouth, and its second president, had been living at Yale 
during this controversy and took sides with the party 
favoring State control. He was inclined to be a Pres- 
byterian and differed in religious faith from the trustees 
and most of the people connected with Dartmouth, who 
were what was called in New England, Orthodox, or, 

146 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

more precisely, Congregationalists of the old Puritan 
faith of the first settlers. 

Dr. Wheelock finally quarrelled with his board of 
trustees, and addressed a memorial to the Legislature of 
New Hampshire, asking them to investigate the college, 
which, according to his account, was being ruined and 
perverted from its original purpose by the trustees in 
spite of all that he could do to save it. He retained 
Webster as his counsel; but Webster, finding how 
things were tending, withdrew from the employment. 
The Legislature responded to Wheelock's memorial 
by appointing a committee, which made an investigation 
of the college and reported that there was no ground for 
interference by the State. 

But the subject was now before the public, and the 
Baptists, Methodists, liberals, and nothingarians, as 
Jeremiah Mason called them, joined with the Demo- 
cratic party in favor of State control. A newly elected 
Democratic governor, William Plumer, dealt with the 
subject in his message, denounced the college charter 
as a relic of monarchy, hostile to the spirit of free 
government, and called in the aid of Thomas Jefferson, 
who wrote one of those letters of vague generalities 
which had given him the fame of a sage among some 
people and the notoriety of a demagogue among others. 
Lawyers and priests, he said, were trying to force the 
absurd monarchical doctrine of the inviolability of a 
charter which must never be changed because made 
by a wise preceding generation ; " in fine, that the earth 
belongs to the dead and not to the living." 

Under this influence and professing to regard Dart- 
mouth as a private exclusive institution that would never 
amount to anything in that capacity, the Democrats 
urged that its funds and equipment should be taken 
possession of, literally seized, by the paramount author- 
ity of the State, and turned into a State university, at 
Concord, the capital. In 1816 the Legislature passed 
an act changing its name from the " Trustees of Dart- 

147 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

mouth College '' to the " Trustees of Dartmouth Uni- 
versity," and, among other aUerations, increasing the 
number of trustees and giving the State the power of 
appointing some of them. Among the trustees ap- 
pointed under this act was Judge Story, who in poHtics 
was a moderate or independent Democrat. Under tliis 
legislation the trustees organized themselves as the 
university, and got possession of the college charter, 
its books, papers, and apparently of some of the 
buildings.^ 

The old college appears, however, to have gone on 
in its usual course with a good number of students, who 
stood by it loyally ; and the Federalist families through- 
out the State were also loyal to it. The new university 
seems also to have kept itself going and there were 
thus two presidents and two sets of professors in the 
same village. The university, however, had only a 
handful of students, who in one instance, with the aid of 
their professors, undertook to seize some of the books 
and papers of one of the fraternities, but were over- 
powered by the students of the old college and com- 
pelled to surrender.^ All this was good sport for the 
boys, and no doubt there was great enthusiasm among 
them. 

Such a state of affairs could not of course continue, 
and was allowed to continue only while a case at law 
was made up to test the question in the courts. The issue 
was a serious one, for might not other State Legis- 
latures do the same thing? Might not the Massachusetts 
Legislature seize Harvard College to convert it into a 
State university and might not the Connecticut Legis- 
lature seize Yale? 

* Webster, Private Correspondence, vol. i, p. 303, and other 
letters of years 1818, 1819; Smith, History of Dartmouth 
College, Chaps. XI and XII. See also Shirley's Dartmouth 
College Causes for much curious information, very confusedly 
arranged. 

' Shirley, Dartmouth College Causes, pp. 291, 292. 

148 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

In the lawsuit that was brought there were three 
legal points : 

1. Whether under the Constitution of New Hampshire 
the Legislature had the right to alter or interfere with the 
vested rights of a college corporation. 

2. Was a college a public corporation, like a town, or 
municipality, as we call it, whose charter is always subject 
to change at the pleasure of the Legislature? 

3. If a college was a private corporation, was its charter 
a contract between the State and the persons to whom the 
charter was granted ; and in that case was the change made by 
the Legislature in the Dartmouth charter forbidden by that 
clause in the National Constitution which says that no State 
shall pass any "law impairing the obligation of contracts?" 
This clause had been held to apply to ordinary contracts be- 
tween individuals, to contracts to which a State was a party, 
and to certain grants made by a State. But was a college 
charter made by the British Crown and accepted as such by 
New Hampshire such a grant as could be called a contract? 

The question seems easy enough now after it has 
all been settled for nearly a hundred years; but it was 
of extreme difficulty at that time when people's minds 
were not at all accustomed to the idea of a legislature 
not being able to control corporations it had created. 
In England, where Parliament is not limited by a writ- 
ten constitution, it has controlled and changed universi- 
ties far greater than Dartmouth, and has deprived 
business corporations of their franchises, as in the 
famous case of the East India Company in 1858. 

The Dartmouth case was argued in the Supreme 
Court of New Hampshire, and as counsel for the col- 
lege appeared Mason and Jeremiah Smith, usually 
known as Judge Smith, a very eminent and learned 
lawyer of that time. Webster, now retained on the side 
of the college, was also in the case, and seems to have 
addressed the court in a highly emotional speech, which, 
however, has not been preserved. The decision was 
against the college, on the ground that the college 
charter created a public corporation, established for the 
purpose of public education ; it was not in any sense 

149 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

a contract with individuals and, therefore, must neces- 
sarily remain in control of the Legislature of the State, 
which could alter and regulate it for the public benefit. 

This decision made the question all the more far- 
reaching and important. If the Dartmouth College 
charter was a public corporation, at the mercy of the 
Legislature, then the charters, not only of all institu- 
tions of learnings, but of charity and benevolence, all over 
the country, would be forever in the same predicament. It 
might be held that no charter of any sort of corporation 
could be regarded as a contract ; and forecasting a little 
and extending the question into modern times, would not 
the charters of certain business corporations, canal 
companies, railroads, and steamboat companies, and 
possibly companies supplying food products or carrying 
on any important function which could be called public, 
be outside of the protection of the National Constitution 
and subject to change, regulation, and interference every 
time a new political party or a new set of men had a 
majority in a legislature? 

The college appealed from the decision of the New 
Hampshire court, and took the case before the Supreme 
Court of the United States at Washington. Mason 
and Judge Smith, apparently feeling that they had done 
all in their power and that a fresh mind and a new point 
of view would be of advantage, retired from the case, 
and Webster, at the request of the friends of the col- 
lege and with the entire consent of Mason and Judge 
Smith, was given charge of the appeal. He chose as 
his colleague Joseph Hopkinson, an accomplished Phila- 
delphia lawyer of the old school, with many cases in the 
Supreme Court, in Congress at that time, and a great 
admirer and friend of Webster. They argued the 
appeal with John Holmes and William Wirt, the Attor- 
ney-General of the United States, against them. 

Holmes was a clever Maine politician, who was 
afterwards in the Senate at the time of Webster's reply 
to Hayne, and made some good speeches in that great 

ISO 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

debate. But as a lawyer he was hardly equal to the 
Dartmouth College case. Wirt was of very consider- 
j able ability and eloquence, but so busy as Attorney- 
' General that he probably had not had time to prepare 
himself for such a difficult case. Webster, who was 
by no means given to underestimating an opponent, 
thought very poorly of both Wirt's and Holmes's argu- 
ments. Judge Bell, of the New Hampshire court, that 
had decided against the college, came on to Washington 
to hear the argument, but got up and left the court- 
room in the midst of Holmes's speech ; out of disgust, 
Webster thought, at such a weak performance. So 
much, however, has been said on the gloriousness of the 
college side that one would like to hear what the friends 
of the university thought. But it is difficult to find 
anything except a small scrap. 

" The two speeches of Wirt and Webster in the college 
case were as good as any I have ever heard. Webster was 
unfair in his statement, for which he deserved and received 
castigation ; but his argument was able and his peroration elo- 
quent. He appeared himself to be much affected ; and the 
audience was silent as death." (Webster, Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvii, p. 548.) 

In the argument in the State Court, the chief labor 
of preparing the brief appears to have fallen upon Judge 
Smith, and he quite exhausted the subject. Nothing 
of any consequence could very well be added to his col- 
lection of arguments and precedents. This was well 
known among New England lawyers, and Judge 
Smith's argument, though not published, was generally 
held among the profession to have been a remarkable 
one. This put Webster in a somewhat awkward posi- 
tion, which he felt very keenly. He had been chosen 
largely because he could by his oratory and broad views 
arouse the feeling and political sympathy of the Supreme 
Court; but the real basis of his argument, the technical 
legal part, mmst all be taken from Judge Smith's brief 
and notes. In fact, members of the Bar were already 

151 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

twitting him by saying that now they would have a 
chance to know what Judge Smith's argument had 
really been. He told all this frankly in several letters 
to Mason and Judge Smith and said that he expected! 
to do no more than recite their arguments, and that the* 
rest would be " nonsense," as he called it, that is, ora- 
tory. In this way he strove to save himself from 
appearing to pose among his brethren in plumes bor- 
rowed from two men who were regarded as his superiors 
in legal experience and learning. 

Technically there was only one question before the 
Supreme Court and that was whether the acts of the 
New Hampshire Legislature altering the college charter 
came within the clause of the National Constitution 
prohibiting the States from passing laws impairing the 
obligation of contracts. It was on this point alone 
that the case had been appealed, and it was the only 
point on which it could be appealed and give the 
Supreme Court jurisdiction. But with the decision of 
the State Court against him on this point, the demo- 
cratic and States' rights feeling of the country support- 
ing that decision, and several of the judges of the Su- 
preme Court known to favor the State Court decision, 
Webster felt very uncertain about winning on this one 
point. He sought wider ground and wanted to argue 
that the acts of the New Hampshire Legislature were 
void because they violated the New Hampshire Consti- 
tution by depriving the college, without its consent, 
of its long-established vested rights, and that even 
without the provisions of the New Hampshire Constitu- 
tion the Legislature could not as a matter of general 
law interfere with vested rights. He directed several 
suits to be brought about the college property between 
citizens of New Hampshire and Vermont, which, being 
suits between citizens of different States, could on that 
ground be taken to the Supreme Court at Washington 
and raise all the questions he wanted to argue. These 
he hoped to fall back upon if he failed in the Supreme 

152 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

Court on the one narrow point of impairing the obliga- 
tion of contracts. 

At the same time, however, in arguing this point of 
obHgation of contracts he managed to introduce his 
other argument, that the acts of the New Hampshire 
Legislature were void because interfering with vested 
rights, contrary to the New Hampshire Constitution. 
He frankly admitted to the court that this argument 
was irrelevant, but gave a good excuse for making it. 

"I am aware of the limits which bound the jurisdiction of 
the court in this case, and that on this record nothing can 
be decided but the single question whether those acts are 
repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. Yet it 
may assist in forming an opinion of their true nature and 
character, to compare them with these fundamental principles, 
introduced into the State governments for the purpose of 
limiting the exercise of the legislative power, and which the 
Constitution of New Hampshire expresses with great fulness 
and accuracy." (Works, Edition 1851, vol. v, p. 468.) 

He is supposed also to have slipped in a long argu- 
ment on the wickedness of the Democratic party in 
attacking and desiring to destroy an institution of learn- 
ing out of mere party spite and jealousy. He enlarged 
on the danger of such invasions. This is supposed to 
have been that part of his argument which he says was 
" left out " of the printed report of it.* If the surmise 
is correct, that the part left out was of this nature, 
it was no doubt for effect on the Federalist members 
of the court, especially Chief Justice Marshall. It was 
of course put in legal and delicate language and not 
in stump speech style. It naturally ran into and was 
connected with his other point, that as a matter of New 
Hampshire constitutional law and as a matter of general 
law without the New Hampshire Constitution the 
Legislature had no right, and should have no right, to 
interfere with vested rights against the will and consent 
of the holders of those rights. These arguments, while 



* Shirley, Dartmouth College Causes, p. 237. 

153 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

in a strict technical sense irrelevant, were really very 
much in point, because they showed what must have 
been the intention of the framers of the National Con- 
stitution in adopting the clause forbidding the States 
to pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts. The 
intention must have been to protect vested rights against 
party malice and sudden and excited changes of feel- 
ing in the population of a State, whether the name 
applied to such changes was agrarian, populist, federal- 
ist, or democratic. 

It was in this way that Webster made his argu- 
ment powerful. Three-fourths of his argument was 
devoted to these ideas and only the remaining fourth 
to direct argument on the constitutional clause about 
impairing the obligation of contracts. He had pre- 
sumably been put in charge of the college's case to make 
just such an appeal because he was better equipped for 
that purpose than either Mason or Judge Smith. 

His argument of several hours to the court has been 
preserved in his works in only its dry, legal form ; but 
tradition and the testimony of Dr. Goodrich, who heard 
it, have always placed it among the remarkable speeches 
of his life. He began in his usual easy way, it is said, 
which afterwards became so familiar to the country ; 
almost conversational ; reasoning out his subject in the 
clearest, simplest way ; occasionally his voice rising and 
his dark eye flashing, as some important thought or 
one of those similes drawn from nature aroused him. 
Judge Story had prepared to take notes, but sat hour 
after hour listening without putting pen to paper. 
" Everything was so clear," he afterwards said, " that 
not a note seemed necessary." 

Not until the close of the merely technical argument 
did Webster permit himself to appeal powerfully to the 
court on the question of public policy, whether all the 
charitable and learned institutions in the country should 
be stripped of their property at the whim of legislatures. 
On this point no other man in the country could be 

154 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 

so impressive. It was the cause he showed, not merely 
of institutions and corporations, but of every man in 
the country who owned property : " Shall our State 
legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their 
own, to turn it from its original use and apply it to 
such ends and purposes as they, in their discretion, 
shall see fit? " 

He started to speak of his personal relations to the 
college. '■ It is, as I have said, a small college, and 
yet there are those who love it." His feelings almost 
got the better of him, his eyes filled with tears and his 
voice choked. It was one of those powerful emotions 
which were natural to him and better controlled in 
later years. He went on, but in such broken words 
of tenderness of his father, mother, brother, and the 
trials of his early life, that Dr. Goodrich absorbed in 
listening could not recollect exactly what he said. 

" The court room during those two or three minutes pre- 
sented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with 
his tall gaunt figure bent over, as if to catch the slightest whis- 
per, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion 
and his eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington 
at his side, with his small and emaciated frame and coun- 
tenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human 
being— leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and 
the remainder of the court, at the extremities, pressing, as it 
were, towards a single point, while the audience below were 
wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench. 
to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face." 
(Curtis, Webster, vol. i, p. i?!-) 

The argument of the cause occupied three days — 
March loth, nth, and 12th, of the year 1818. The 
next day the Chief Justice announced that there were 
diflferent opinions, that some of the judges had not 
formed opinions, and that a decision could not be ex- 
pected until the next term, which meant the following 
year. Chief Justice Marshall was generally believed to 
be on the side of the college; Judge Story against it, 
because he had been one of the trustees of the new 

155 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

university and was a Democrat, though an independent 
one. Webster summed up the situation: 

"The chief and Washington, I have no doubt, are with 
us. Duvall and Todd perhaps against us; the other three 
holding up. I cannot much doubt but that Story will be with 
us in the end, and I think we have much more than an even 
chance for one of the others." (Private Correspondence, vol. i, 
p. 277.) 

The case had already attracted wide attention all 
over the country; and as the judges would be deliberat- 
ing on it for a year, both sides set to work to influence 
them through public opinion. The new university had 
the decision and opinion of the New Hampshire court 
printed and circulated. The old college circulated Web- 
ster's argument among all important persons. 

" ' It has already been or shortly will be,' writes President 
Brown of the old college, ' read by all the commanding men 
of New England and New York; and so far as it has gone it 
has united them all, without a single exception within my 
knowledge, in one broad and impenetrable phalanx for our de- 
fense and support.'" (Shirley, Dartmouth College Causes, 
p. 271.) 

The phalanx, the enthusiastic President said, was ex- 
tending southward, and Chancellor Kent, whose opinion 
was everywhere greatly respected, had been won over. 
Accordingly, when February, 1819, arrived. Chief 
Justice Marshall had as usual brought round the 
Supreme Court to his own way of thinking, and with 
due solemnity he handed down an opinion reversing 
the New Hampshire court and deciding that the college 
was a private corporation whose charter was a contract 
that could not be altered by the Legislature without the 
consent of the college.^ 

The decision immediately became a cornerstone and 
foundation in American constitutional law. It is doubt- 
ful if any case has been so much cited, used, and relied 
upon by American lawyers and judges. In the " Ameri- 

' Shirley, Dartmouth College Causes, pp. 201, 264-267, 268- 
272, 293, 294. 

156 



KENNISTON TRIAL 

can Reports" it is cited nine hundred and seventy times." 
More than that, the vast business operations of the whole 
continent have been built up upon it. It has been not 
only all our institutions of learning and charity that 
have been saved from spoliation, and Democratic jeal- 
ousy, but our great railroad and steamboat systems and 
great enterprises of trade have been protected from the 
granger, populist, and socialist movements, which at 
times would have annihilated them. It may be true, 
as is sometimes said, that it has in later times protected 
them too well. But that is a modern limitation, a mod- 
ern problem to be solved. They had to be protected in 
the beginning or they could not have existed at all, and 
they are entitled at all times to a certain amount of 
stabiHty and protection. 

A curious criminal case, in which Webster was coun- 
sel for the defense at this period, attracted much atten- 
tion in New England. A certain Major Goodridge 
dragged himself into the toll-house on the road between 
Exeter, New Hampshire, and Newburyport, Massa- 
chusetts, late one night, said he had been robbed and 
beaten, showed a pistol shot through his left hand, 
and then fell into a delirium. When recovered he re- 
turned with a lantern and some persons to the place 
of the robbery, where they found his watch and papers 
scattered on the ground. Great sympathy was felt 
for him throughout the neighborhood, and many people 
assisted him in the search for the robbers. He first 
charged some poor people named Kenniston, in whose 
cellar he professed to have found a piece of gold and a 
ten-dollar note, both identified by private marks which 
he said he placed on all his money. Next, with the aid 
of a witch-hazel conjurer, he found some gold and 
papers on the property of the toll-gate keeper; and 
several others he accused in the same way. 

Most people w^ere entirely on the side of Major 
Goodridge. But a few doubted his story and retained 
Webster to defend the per sons he accused. The inves- 

• Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, p. 285. 

157 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

tig-ation finally centred on the trial of the Kennistons, 
whose previous character was good and who had not 
passed any money, or been seen to have any, since the 
supposed robbery. 

Webster adopted the theory that Goodridge was his 
own robber, and had fired the pistol shot through his 
own hand. It seemed like an improbable supposition 
at the start; but, as Webster told the jury, the range of 
human motives is almost infinite. Goodridge may have 
been moved by a desire to avoid payment of his debts 
or by a whimsical ambition for distinction. His story 
was that the pistol of the robber went off just as he 
grasped it with his left hand. But the physician who 
attended him found no marks of powder on his hand; 
and from appearances the wound was probably inflicted 
by a weapon held some feet aw^ay. There were marks 
of powder, however, on the coat sleeve, and the ball 
had apparently passed . through the sleeve as well as 
the hand. The major, Webster said, had intended to 
shoot only through his sleeve and the ball had acciden- 
tally penetrated the hand. 

Webster enlarged this point with wonderful skill 
and added greatly to his reputation as a cross-examiner. 
The Kennistons were acquitted ; and another person, 
one Jackman, whom Goodridge accused, was also ac- 
quitted after two trials. The toll-gate keeper then 
brought an action for a malicious prosecution against 
Goodridge, a verdict for a large sum was recovered, 
and Goodridge left New England a disgraced man. 

Twenty years afterwards, when Webster was travel- 
lins: in western New York \vith his wife, he was sur- 
prised at the manner of a man who waited on them at 
a country hotel. The man w^as agitated and tried to 
keep his back turned ; and it w^as not till he was leaving 
the hotel that Webster learned that his name was Good- 
ridge.'' 

^ Harvey's Reminiscences, p. loi ; Curtis, vol. i, pp. 171- 

175. 

158 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 

From November, 1820, until January, 1821, Web- 
ster took part in the convention which met to frame 
a constitution for Massachusetts. The separation of 
Maine and its formation into a State in 1820, partly to 
please its people, who had begun to have ideas and de- 
velopment of their own, and partly to strengthen the 
northern anti-slavery vote in Congress, made necessary 
some changes in the old Constitution of Massachusetts 
adopted in 1780; and it was thought a good opportunity 
for a general revision. 

Great care was taken in selecting the delegates to 
this convention, and it was a picked body of men from 
all over the State, at a time when there was much 
enthusiasm for the great problems of government and 
for things intellectual in New England. Chief Justice 
Parker and Judge Story were members of it ; and ever}' 
walk of life, commerce and agriculture, as well as the 
law, sent its best ability. 

It was an audience that could thoroughly appreciate 
Webster. He was at home in it; could let himself 
out; show his alertness, abounding vigor, and fund 
of knowledge. He was at that period of his life " the 
most living man," some one said that they had ever 
known. He had little of the repose and ponderousness 
of his later years; and the mere amount of labor he 
could perform impressed people as much as the ease, 
and readiness of his ability. 

The abolitionist historians who search so hard for 
some point, where what seems to them his peculiar form 
of wickedness began, could scarcely find a better place 
than this convention. There were not a few radicals 
in the convention who leaned towards considerable 
Democratic changes in the Constitution; but Webster 
opposed them and took his stand with the conservatives, 
who thought the Constitution very nearly right as it 
was, and favored but few alterations. Webster favored 
the removal of the declaration of a belief in Christian- 
ity as a qualification for office, and it was removed. 

159 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

He advocated retaining the property basis of the 
Senate by which that body was chosen in districts in 
proportion to the amount of taxable property in each 
district. The Democratic radicals complained that this 
gave an advantage to the richer districts, and Webster 
answered them in a notable speech, showing the neces- 
sity for a different origin for the two Houses of the 
Legislature, the one to represent individuals and popu- 
lation, the other to represent property, and the two to 
act as a check on each other. He succeeded in having 
the property basis of the Senate retained ; but in after 
years it was changed. He also made a conservative 
speech on the independence of the judiciar}^ 

Judge Story, who also distinguished himself in the 
convention, said that the struggle was to prevent mis- 
chief to the Constitution. They strove to preserve what 
they already had rather than to establish anything new. 
They acted mostly on the defensive, and congratulated 
themselves on repelling the most Democratic attacks. 
It was one of the first occasions when Webster showed 
the conservatives of the country how much he could 
do for them ; and before long they took him into their 
service for life. 

" ' Our friend Webster,' says Judge Story, ' has gained a 
noble reputation. ... It was a glorious field for him, and 
he has had an ample harvest. The whole force of his great 
mind was brought out, and in several speeches he commanded 
universal admiration. He always led the van, and was most 
skilful and instantaneous in attack and retreat. He fought, 
as I have told him, in the imminent deadly breach, and all I 
could do was to skirmish in aid of him upon some of the 
enemy's outposts. On the whole, I never was more proud of 
any display than his in my life.'" (Life of Story, vol. i, 

P- 295-) 

In the midst of his labors in the convention, he pre- 
pared and delivered at Plymouth on the 226. of Decem- 
ber, 1820, the oration in celebration of the two hundredth 
anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers from 
the Mayflower, on the bleak and inhospitable winter 

160 



PLYMOUTH ORATION 

coast, the first settlement of New England. These ad- 
dresses or orations on public anniversaries were in that 
century more characteristic of America than of Euro- 
pean nations. We made more of them. This particu- 
lar one at Plymouth seems to have been an advance on 
its predecessors and attracted wide attention. 

jMr. Ticknor has described the occasion. How he 
drove with Webster and his family from Boston to 
Plymouth. Other people from Boston were driving 
down for the celebration, and they all met in the little 
half-way house for dinner and " had a very merry time," 
in Boston fashion. In the oration next day Webster 
was very impressive ; and Ticknor goes on to describe 
his experiences. 

" As soon as we got home to our lodgings all the principal 
people then in Plymouth crowded about him. He was full of 
animation and radiant with happiness. But there was some- 
thing about him very grand and imposing at the same time. 
. . . I never saw him at any time when he seemed to me 
to be more conscious of his own powers or to have a more 
true and natural enjoyment of their possession. ... At the 
ball that followed (the next day) he was agreeable to every- 
body and nothing more ; but when we came home he was as 
frolicsome as a school-boy, laughing and talking and making 
merry with Mrs. Webster, ]\Irs. Davis, and Mrs. Rotch, the 
daughter of his old friend Stockton, till two o'clock in the 
morning." (Curtis, vol. i, p. 193.) 

The address contained a notable attack on slavery 
and the slave trade which Webster little dreamed would 
be quoted against him as an inconsistency thirty years 
afterwards. Everywhere when printed the address was 
received with what now seems like extravagant praise. 
Old John Adams wrote : " It will be read five hundred 
years hence with as much rapture as it was heard. It 
ought to be read at the end of every century, and indeed 
at the end of every year forever and ever." Webster 
himself, ten years after its delivery, thought it the best 
of his efiforts.^ 



Correspondence, vol. i, p. 490. 
II 161 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

In his excellent address at Dartmouth College in 
1901, Mr. McCall justly observed that this Plymouth 
oration, when read in our time, seems full of platitudes, 
and a tendency to grandiose oratory ; and it is certainly 
not in Webster's best and most distinctive style. Its 
extraordinary popularity at the time of its delivery was 
probably because its method and matter were new. 
There had been occasional addresses of this sort before, 
Fourth of July orations, the famous addresses on the 
Anniversary of the Boston Massacre, and plenty of 
anniversary semions. But Webster spread out into a 
broader field, commented in a philosophical way on the 
origin of New England, the character and ideas of her 
people, and their effect on the Revolution and subse- 
quent history. We had then no adequate histories of 
colonial times or of the Revolution. Bancroft, Hil- 
dreth, and Fiske were unknown, so that Webster's 
clear statements of facts and philosophizing on them 
were altogether new and fresh to our people. He 
made everyone proud who could trace their lineage back 
to New England. In short, he raised the occasional 
address to new and broader uses. But his method 
and thought about New England and the Revolution 
have now been repeated so often in ever varying forms, 
that they seem absurdly trite and commonplace. 

This Plymouth oration, however, is said to have 
been the beginning of Webster's fame in the country 
at large. It gave the country a new view of his capac- 
ity ; more so than anything he had done in Congress 
or at the Bar. It was, in fact, his first opportunity to 
address the whole country on a subject in which the 
whole country was interested. Before that he had 
always spoken to more or less restricted audiences. 
But this enlarged view of the characteristics of the 
original New Englanders appealed to everyone, and 
especially to their descendants scattered over the coun- 
try from the Atlantic to the Ohio. It was read every- 
where and at a period when the attention of people was 

162 



PLYMOUTH ORATION 

not absorbed by such a multitude of literary products 
as it is in our time. 

He was not likely to be left long in private life. In 
the two years following the Plymouth oration he was 
engaged in only two cases of much public importance. 
One of them was the case of La Jeiine Eugenie, a slave 
ship under the French flag, captured on the coast of 
Africa. Webster argued that as the slave trade was 
not legalized by France and was contrary to the law 
of nature and of nations, the French owners of the 
vessel had lost all claim to her when she was captured 
by an American cruiser in the midst of her nefarious 
calling; and this argument w^as successful with his 
friend Judge Stoiy, who presided in the Circuit Court 
where the proceedings in condemnation of the vessel 
were taken. The other case of importance was his de- 
fense of Judge Prescott, a probate judge in Boston, 
who, being compensated by fees and not by a fixed 
salary, had taken fees and had held special courts not 
authorized by statute. 



163 



VI 

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE — GREEK INDEPENDENCE — 
TARIFF OF 1824 GIBBONS VS. OGDEN 

Webster's law practice in Boston, described in the 
last chapter, was all that he was allowed to indulge in 
by the public. A committee of gentlemen waited on him 
in the autumn of 1822 to offer him the nomination for 
Congress. It had always been his intention to return 
at some time to public life. He had ambitions and he 
knew he had the abiHty for that service. But he wanted 
to make a little more money at the Bar, He had 
assumed the payment of his father's debts and had never 
been able to discharge them until the recent increase of 
his practice in Boston. Pie was a lavish and careless 
spender of money and a bad saver and investor. In 
fact, he had no idea of saving or growing rich. His 
judgment in investments and savings, so far as his own 
affairs were concerned, was very nearly worthless. 
The intellectual power which raised him so far above 
his fellows in law, public finance, and national banking, 
sank away and disappeared entirely when his own pri- 
vate finances were concerned. In such matters he was 
not a whit above the multitude, who never can have 
anything except what they make from month to month. 
He could make very large sums from month to month 
and could have kept this up to old age, but it would all 
have been scattered as fast as made. 

He did not exactly like going back into public life 
in the same position from which he had retired six 
years before. He was now forty years old and had 
rather considered himself entitled to promotion. But 
he already owed to the people of Boston so much of 
his success and distinction and his opportunities in the 
constitutional convention, that he could not very well 

164 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 

refuse this new and honorable gift. He was elected 
without difficulty and took his seat in December, 1823, 

As we are now^ starting- on the great political period 
of his career, it may be said here once for all that his 
numerous elections to Congress and the Senate during 
the rest of his life seem to have been accomplished 
with hardly any difficulty. There had been something 
of a contest in his New Hampshire election, but in 
his elections to represent Boston he always won in a 
canter, and once by a vote that needed very little to 
make it unanimous. Politically, he seems to have been 
born with a golden spoon in his mouth. But there was 
no luck or chance about it except the conditions of the 
time. The Boston of his day was not the metropolitan 
city of our time, with fully half its population Irish 
Roman Catholics and foreigners, but an old established, 
homogeneous New England community, everybody of 
the same race and the same religion, everybody knowing 
everybody, the upper and well-educated classes ruling, 
as a matter of course, and literary skill, learning, and 
cultivation respected, even exalted, as they have never 
been before or since anywhere in this country. Web- 
ster, with his previous training, fitted into it so exactly, 
was so exactly one of them, that these extremely 
rationalistic and vigorous people were sending to Con- 
gress simply a piece of themselves. 

They created him, made him like themselves by 
long years of their environment, developed him by 
praise, applause, and confidence ; and he never could 
have become the man he finally was without the 
long years of service they gave him in Congress. He 
never could of course have become the man he was 
without those very remarkable and fundamental prob- 
lems of the Constitution and the Union with which 
it was his fortune to deal. All these were the peculiar 
circumstances of his creation and must be remembered. 

It is, perhaps, true, as has sometimes been said, that 
he would be an impossibility in our time, and might 

165 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

not have been in the Senate at all. If he had lived in 
our time he would of course have been moulded by our 
circumstances, and even assuming that the same ability 
could be created by our circumstances, he would still 
necessarily have been a different sort of person. 

Now that he is again in Congress, he finds the poHti- 
cal condition considerably changed since the War of 
1812. What is known in our history as the " era of 
good feeling" had prevailed for some time under the 
administration of President Monroe. The Federal 
party was dead. President Monroe was re-elected in 
1820 by an electoral vote that was almost unanimous. 
One elector voted against him so that he should not 
have the honor which had been given only to Wash- 
ington. 

Thousands of former Federalists were now Demo- 
crats or Republicans, as they were often called. The 
principal political differences were sectional, between the 
North and the South, or between the West and the 
Northeast, or between shades of opinion among the 
Democrats. But of course many of the good old con- 
servatives in Boston who voted for Webster and elected 
him by such a large majority regarded themselves as 
still Federalists; and their opponents called them Fed- 
eralists, although the Federalist party had no organized 
existence. 

Congress was thoroughly Democratic; and we can 
understand how little ordinary partisanship there was 
when we find that as soon as Webster took his seat, 
Henry Clay, the Speaker, without consultation or hesi- 
tation, placed him at the head of the judiciary commit- 
tee, an important position, which it had not been usual 
to give in such an oft'-hand manner to the opposite party, 
even when the person concerned was so eminently fitted 
for the post as Webster. But Clay, it is said, was bid- 
ding for Federalist votes. 

Since Webster's previous service only one great 
question had come up in Congress and been settled, 
so far as it could be settled. Negro slavery had disap- 

166 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 

peared in the North ; but in the South it was becoming 
more important than ever for three reasons. The in- 
vention of the cotton gin enabled a slave to clean the 
seeds from a thousand pounds of cotton in a day in- 
stead of from only six under the old process ; the inven- 
tion of spinning machinery in England enabled cotton 
to be manufactured into fabrics more easily than ever 
before, and created a demand for it ; and the vast regions 
of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mis- 
souri were being settled, were favorable by climate and 
soil to cotton and slavery, and offered a prospect of 
great wealth to the southern people and slave owners. 

Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi had been ad- 
mitted as States in recent years with slavery recognized 
in each, and that, of course, increased the southern and 
slave-holding vote in Congress. As an offset to this, 
and to preserve the balance of power, according to the 
custom of the time, Indiana, Illinois, and Maine had been 
admitted as States to strengthen the northern vote and 
influence. But when Missouri in 1820 applied for ad- 
mission as a slave State, the North and the South for the 
first time found themselves in a serious altercation. 
Missouri, the North said, was beyond the Mississippi 
River, and it had never been intended, when the Consti- 
tution was adopted, that slavery should spread beyond 
the Mississippi. The North, becoming every year more 
convinced of the evil of slavery and more intolerant of 
it, was in truth alarmed at this threatened spread of it. 
The South were equally alarmed at the threat to stop 
the advance of their enterprise and wealth, and an- 
nounced the doctrine that the Con,stitution left slavery 
to the decision of the individual States, and that if 
Missouri chose to be a slave State neither Congress 
nor the North had any right to interfere. 

The dispute was settled, principally, by Henry Clay, 
who took a leading part in arranging what we know 
as the Missouri Compromise, the first of his famous 
efforts of this kind. Missouri was admitted as a slave 
State, but slavery was to be prohibited in all the rest 

167 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of the Louisiana purchase north of latitude 36° 30', 
which was the southern boundary of Missouri. Web- 
ster as a citizen of Boston appears to have been opposed 
to the Missouri Compromise. He was one of a com- 
mittee to report resolutions against the extension of 
slavery into Missouri or into any territory beyond the 
Mississippi, and he made a speech to the same effect. 
The spread of slavery must, he said, be stopped or it 
" would roll on desolating the vast expanse of continent 
to the Pacific Ocean." This speech the abolitionists 
took great pains to quote against him after the year 
1850.^ 

The North undoubtedly gained by the Missouri 
Compromise ; but the weakness of what it gained was 
that the prohibition of slavery extended only to the 
Louisiana purchase and did not reach the after-acquired 
territory of Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, 
Colorado, Nevada, and Utah ; and, moreover, the pro- 
hibition was contained in a mere act of Congress which 
could be repealed by any subsequent Congress. Web- 
ster in later years became seriously involved in all these 
consequences. But for the present the Missouri Com- 
promise put the whole slavery trouble at rest for over 
twenty-five years, and, as some think, gave Clay and 
others too much confidence in compromises. 

There was very little for Webster to do in Congress 
at this time or for the next seven years ; nothing calcu- 
lated to bring out his best abilities ; and if his service 
in Congress had not extended to the great questions that 
lay beyond those seven years, it would hardly be neces- 
sary to write biographies of him. 

It was at this time that he became intimate with 
William Plumer, a Congressman of cultivation and 
attainments from New Hampshire ; and Plumer gives 
an interesting account of a moonlight conversation with 
him. 

' Theodore Parker's " Sermon on Death of Webster," p. 36. 

168 



GREEK INDEPENDENCE 

" We were walking togetlicr one broad moonlight evening, 
in the grounds around the Capitol at Washington, when he 
broke out into the most passionate aspirations after glory. 
Without it life was, he said, not worth possessing. The pettj' 
struggles of the day were without interest to him, except as 
they might furnish the opportunity of saying or doing some- 
thing which would be remembered in after time. Inquiring 
my age, and finding that I was some seven years his junior, 
he said, * Oh ! that I had those seven years, that you have 
yet to come to reach my present age.' ' I would gladly give 
them to you,' said I, ' if you would give me what you have 
done in your last seven.' ' Nothing, notliing,' he exclaimed. 
' I have done absolutely nothing. At thirty, Alexander had 
conquered the world ; and I am forty.' ' And at forty,' said I, 
' Caesar had done nothing.' ' Ay,' said he, ' that is better ; 
there is something in that. Caesar at forty had done nothing: 
we may say then at forty one may still hope to do great 
things.' Observing that I smiled at his enthusiasm, he smiled 
too ; and said, ' You laugh at me, Plumer ! Your quiet way 
of looking at things may be the best, after all ; but I have 
sometimes such glorious dreams ! And sometimes, too, I half 
believe that they will one day wake into glorious realities.' 
We walked on, in silence, for some time together, he musing 
on schemes of ambition and labor of immortality ; I, on the 
duties of a humbler but not unhappy life." (Webster, Works, 
National Edition, vol. xvii, p. 560.) 

Soon after his entering Congress at this time, he 
found a subject that raised some of the never-ending 
problems of human liberty well suited to lawyer-like 
eloquence. The Greeks were in the midst of their war 
for independence against the Turks. They were a 
small people against a powerful military and despotic 
oppressor ; the issue was doubtful ; the heroism of their 
struggle, their wonderful past, all that they had done 
for human liberty in the ancient world, for art, for 
literature, for the revival of learning and freedom in 
the Reformation, appealed to a certain class of minds 
who were ready to give them sympathy and assistance 
whether they lost or won. But to other minds it seemed 
bad policy to favor an unimportant people who might 
be unsuccessful, who, indeed, probably would be unsuc- 
cessful. To favor such a people might involve America 

169 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

in war or in the complicated diplomacy of the European 
nations, and was at best a mere literary sentiment, a 
fanciful, impractical sympathy that should be left to 
individual indulgence and not risked by serious states- 
men in the halls of Congress. 

Nevertheless, President Monroe in his message 
had favored the Greeks, had expressed the belief that 
they would gain their independence, and wished them 
success. So Webster introduced a simple resolution 
urging that an agent or commissioner be sent to Greece 
whenever the President deemed it expedient ; and on this 
resolution he made a speech, published in his works, and 
greatly admired in its day. It was reprinted wherever 
the English language was spoken, translated into Greek, 
Spanish, and, indeed, all the languages of Europe and 
circulated in South America. The message of the 
President and speeches by Webster and Clay were the 
first conspicuous and able official expression of sympa- 
thy from any nation, and there is every reason to believe 
that Webster's words must have contributed to the 
creation throughout the civilized world of that favorable 
feeling towards Greece which had not a little to do with 
her ultimate success. 

The people who crowded to hear him on the day he 
spoke were, it is said, rather in expectation of some very 
violent oratory on liberty or a move on the political 
chessboard. But instead of what might be called a 
regulation popular outburst, they listened to a learned 
and subdued, but well sustained, attack on the principles 
of the " Holy Alliance," which, since the fall of Napo- 
leon, had undertaken to so regulate the affairs of Eu- 
rope that there should be no more unruly outburst of 
Republicanism or overthrows of monarchical rule. 
Webster analyzed the congresses, the leagues, and the 
understandings of the nations of the Alliance — Austria, 
Prussia, and Russia — and ridiculed their foundation 
principle that the nations of Europe have a right to 
interfere and suppress a people who attempt to throw 

170 



GREEK INDEPENDENCE 

off the government that is over them. Thus he made 
his speech much wider than the cause of the Greeks ; 
and, in fact, it was an eloquent essay on the poHtical 
situation in Europe. 

Fifteen years before the dehvery of this speech. 
Napoleon and France had been contending for the very 
doctrine which Webster now advocated, namely, that it 
I was contrary to public international law and civilized 
policy for any nation, or set of nations, to deny to an- 
other nation its right to govern itself and adopt repub- 
licanism or monarchy as it pleased. For twenty years 
France had contended that if her people chose tO' abolish 
their old monarchy and have in its place semi-republi- 
canism, a consulate, an emperor, or, if you please, Na- 
poleonism, it was an affair entirely of the French people, 
a sacred right in which other nations must not inter- 
fere. The other nations had denied this right, had 
declared the old monarchy of France the only sacred 
right, the only real legitimacy ; and they fought for 
twenty years, and slaughtered millions of men until 
they had destroyed Napoleon's power and restored the 
old French monarchy. 

Nothing shows more clearly that the terrible stress 
of the old Napoleonic situation was passing away and 
that natural liberals were gradually returning tO' liberal 
ideas than this speech of Webster, in which he formally 
comes over to what had been part of the French and 
Napoleonic cause. Ten or fifteen years before the 
struggle of France and Napoleon to defend themselves 
had been so terrific, their conquests had been so ex- 
tended, they had involved and injured the interests of 
so many other nations, they had gone to such extremes 
and threatened such an unbalancing of old conditions, 
that many natural liberals had for the time become tories 
land hardly dared be anything else. 

Perhaps the part of his Greek speech best to quote 
'as a specimen of Webster's style and manner at this time 
is one of the opening passages : 

171 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

/"We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world; we must 
pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge; 
we must more especially withdraw ourselves from this place, 
and the scenes and objects which here surround us, — if we 
/ would separate ourselves entirely from the influence of all 

/ those memorials of herself which ancient Greece has trans- 

\ mitted for the admiration and the benefit of mankind. This 

free form of government, this popular assembly, the common 
council held for the common good — where have we contem- 
plated its earliest models? This practice of free debate and 
public discussion, the contest of mind with mind, and that 
popular eloquence which, if it were here, on a subject like this, 
would move the stones of the Capitol, — whose was the lan- 
guage in which all these were first exhibited? Even the edifice 
in which we assemble, these proportioned columns, this orna- 
mented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, 
and that we like the rest of mankind are greatly her debtors." 

I. 

Webster always liked his Greek speech, and some six 
or seven years afterwards wrote of it, "' I think I am 
more fond of this child than any of the family." It 
was probably his love of culture and classical scholar- 
ship that made him fond of it. His detailed exposure 
of the devious ways of the Holy Alliance seems now a 
trifle tiresome, because the occasion for it has long^ since 
passed away. But his descriptions of the spirit of the 
old Greeks, the heroes of Thermopylae rising again after 
two thousand years to expel the Turk and the Tartar 
with the same desperate valor with which they had ex- 
\ pelled the barbaric Persian, will probably remain fresh 

! for us for many years to come. 

\ In his speech in support of Webster's resolution on 

; Greek independence Henry Clay, in a somewhat patron- 

's izing manner, had said that the measure was not to be 

; condemned because Webster was or had been a Federal- 

\ ist ; it was no doubt bad enough to be a Federalist ; but 

* the author of the resolution was nevertheless a worthy 

man. He had previously told Webster what he intended 
to say ; that he was willing to do what he could to 
remove the prejudice against Federalists, especially in 
this case. Webster, in relating this interview, said^ 
that he was inclined to doubt whether Clay's motive 

172 



/ 



TARIFF OF 1824 

was altogether friendly ; by which he seems to have 
meant that Clay may have intended to injure Webster 
politically by calling attention to his Federalism and 
dwelling upon it. The incident is important as showing / 
not only how seriously discredited Federalism was, 
but how serious a handicap to Webster was his former 
indulgence in it. He never could shake it off; and in 
after years it prevented his nomination for the Presi- 
dency.- 

The Greek speech was in January, 1824; and soon 
afterward that most troublesome of all American ques- 
tions, a tariff bill, came before the House. A tariff 
bill had, as we have seen, been passed, under the leader- 
ship of Calhoun, in 1816, and had given a certain 
amount of protection to domestic industries, especially 
cotton and wool manufacturing. Those industries had 
started up during the War of 1812 when Orders in 
Council, French Decrees, and American embargoes had 
driven so many of our people and so much of our capital 
out of ocean commerce and ship-owning. But the pro- 
tection of the Tariff Act of 1816 seemed to be hardly 
enough. Our new industries found it hard to compete 
with the old establishments of Europe, and the new bill 
of 1824, promoted chiefly by Flenry Clay, was much 
more protective. 

It was at this time that Clay made his tariff speech ; 
the most elaborate of his life, in which, by frequently 
calling the new tariff the American system, he gave 
that name to protection, and he himself became known 
as the Father of Protection to American Industries. 
He had spoken before on the subject, notably on the 
bill of 1820, which failed to pass ; and he was a master 
of the w^hole question. As his speech has been called 
the foundation of the system, and, though often referred 
; to, is little known, it may be well to summarize its essen- 
I tial principles. 



Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvii, p. 551. 

173 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

1. The general distress in every part of the union; dimin- 
ished exports, unthreshed crops, bankruptcies, and extreme 
scarcity of money, have been caused by the downfall of our old 
commerce and navigation, which had been in a measure arti- 
ficial and accidental, built up on the accident of nearly thirty 
years of war in Europe, which prevented the European nations 
from attending to their own commercial interests. Europe 
is now tranquil, competing naturally with us, and we are the 
losers. 

2. The object of the new tariff bill is, therefore, to create 
a home market for our people by cutting off the import of 
foreign manufactured goods, just as Great Britain has pro- 
hibited the importation of supplies which her own people can 
produce. Our exportation of Indian corn, pork, etc., has fallen 
off in recent years by millions of bushels and millions of 
barrels. 

3. Numerous and variegated industries increase a nation's 
wealth. A nation restricted to one or a few industries will 
always remain comparatively poor. It has always been the 
policy of England, and the other European nations, to confine 
us, if possible, to the mere production of raw materials so that 
we would buy manufactured articles from Europe. 

4. Great Britain, by a long continued system of protection, 
attained to that vast wealth which enabled her to carry through 
the Napoleonic wars by subsidizing as allies Austria, Prussia, 
and Russia. " Self-poised, resting upon her own internal re- 
sources, possessing a home market, carefully cherished and 
guarded, she is ever prepared for any emergency." 

5. The Southern States are not by their circumstances 
necessarily excluded from manufacturing. They are disquali- 
fied only from certain branches of it. 

6. A protective tariff will not diminish our exports, our 
navigation or our foreign commerce; for whatever augments 
the wealth of a nation must increase its capacity to make the 
exchanges of commerce. We must protect ourselves as other 
nations have done against the overwhelming influence of i 
foreign competition. 

7. A protective tariff will not necessarily diminish the 
public revenue, by too great restriction of importation. That 
is a question for experiment and adjustment. "Such is the 
elastic and accumulating nature of our public resources, from 
the silent augmentation of our population, that if, in any 
given state of the public revenue, we throw ourselves upon a 
couch and go to sleep, we may, after a short time, awake with 
an ability abundantly increased to redeem any reasonable 
amount of public debt with which we may happen to be 
burdened." 

174 



TARIFF OF 1824 

8. Free trade and the so-called natural growth of indus- 
tries would afford, perhaps, an admirable system if all nations 
would agree to it. But so long as individual nations seize 
their opportunities to protect their own industries and peoples, 
and try to injure or absorb the trade of other nations, free 
trade must be either adopted or rejected as suits the circum- 
stances of each nation. England has long lived under the 
most elaborate and complete system of protection. Let us 
imitate her example, let our industries be protected as England's 
are, " and we shall then be ready, as England now is said to be, 
to put aside protection, and enter upon the freest exchanges." 

9. Manufacturing may tend to accumulation of capital in a 
few hands ; but so has planting in our Southern States ; and 
our past success in ship-owning and commerce created nabobs 
of the North. 

10. A protective tariff is constitutional under that clause 
of the Constitution which gives Congress power to regulate 
commerce with foreign nations. 

11. Varied domestic industries are a vast advantage in 
war, enabling a nation to live upon itself. We learned the 
need of them in 1812. 

12. One of the strongest arguments for protection is the 
wonderful success of Napoleon in building up by its means 
the industry, the finances and the power of France, which 
enabled her to contend for nearly twenty years against the 
combined attacks of all the other nations of Europe. 

Clay was an admirer of Napoleon, quoted many of 
his keen, trenchant opinions, and enlarged with statistics 
and full details on all the points that have been just 
enumerated. England had not then changed to free 
trade, although the first symptoms of the coming change 
were in evidence. The history of the world for the past 
two hundred years undoubtedly showed a strong con- 
sensus of opinion among all European nations in favor 
of protection. 

Webster replied to Clay in a notable speech, often 
quoted against him in later years, when, like most people 
in New England, he became a protectionist. In 1824, 
however, he was in the position of representing a 
community which was both commercial and manufactur- 
ing; in some respects decidedly opposed to a protective 
tariff, in other respects in its favor. As representing 
ship-owners and merchants, his argument against the 

175 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

tariff was a sound and valid one, because the tariff 
taxed heavily the materials out of which ships were 
built ; and to this day there are comparatively few who 
will deny that protection has depressed our merchant 
marine. Webster pleaded eloquently for it; and cited 
the well-known policy of the English nation which, 
before all things, encourages its ships on the ground 
that the first and best of all manufactures is the manu- 
facture of ships. 

He was willing to have moderate protection, but it 
must not be carried to an extreme. The act of 1816 
was good enough ; and he made a protest, which is 
again raised in our own time by President Taft, against 
passing at one time and in one bill a complicated mass 
of tariff provisions which convulse the country and 
which hardly any one person can entirely approve or 
disapprove. It would be better to alter and amend the 
tariff a little at a time as real necessity should from time 
to time prove the need of it. There were some things 
in this bill of 1824 that he approved, and yet on the 
whole he would be compelled to vote against it. 

One of the most important parts of his speech was 
the denial that there was such distress in the country 
as Clay had represented. Webster described New Eng- 
land as quite prosperous. There had been times, it is 
true, when there had been greater activity, especially 
of a speculative nature. Profits were indeed now low 
in certain pursuits of life, like shipping, " which it is 
not proposed to benefit but to burden by this bill." But 
there was nothing that could be called distress or suf- 
fering. The means of subsistence were abundant, 
wages were high, large sums were being expended for 
improvements for roads, bridges, education and charity. 
The only places where there was anything like the real 
distress described by Clay were localities where the issue 
of paper money had been excessive. 

Descriptions of so-called business distress are noto- 
riously unreliable. People who testify on the subject 

176 




PORTRAIT OF WEBSTER BY STUART 
In the possession of G. F. Williams, Esq. 



I 



TARIFF OF 1824 

mean different things by the words they use. They 
may mean by distress, not making as much money as 
they would Hke to make, or as much as they once made. 
Sometimes it is the speculative class alone who testify. 
The advocates of protection are singularly unreliable in 
such testimony. The degradation, retrogression, misery 
and starvation of low tariff times and the boundingf 
prosperity of high tariff times are painted in very vivid 
colors ; but their advocates would have great difficulty 
in proving the truth of either extreme. 

Webster's remedy for any evils that existed was to 
go cautiously, make sure of the fitness and aptitude of 
any new measures, and largely let things alone, espe- 
cially commerce and navigation. 

" If anything should strike us with astonishment, it is 
that the navigation of the United States should sustain itself. 
Without any government protection whatever, it goes abroad 
to challenge competition with the whole world ; and, in spite 
of all obstacles, it has yet been able to maintain eight hundred 
thousand tons of shipping in the employment of foreign trade. 
How, sir, do the ship owners and navigators accomplish this? 
How is it that they are able to meet, and in some measure 
overcome, universal competition? It is not, sir, by protection 
and bounties, but by unwearied exertion, by extreme economy, 
by unshaken perseverance, by that manly and resolute spirit 
which relies on itself to protect itself. These causes alone 
enable American ships still to keep their element, and show 
the flag of their country in distant seas." 

He protested again against the passage of such a 
long and complicated bill at one vote, when it was 
by no means clear what effect many of its provisions 
would have. He was in favor of domestic industry; 
so was everybody. But agriculture, commerce and 
navigation were as much domestic industry as manufac- 
turing. " Why should we place ourselves in a condition 
where we cannot give every measure, that is distinct 
and separate in itself, a separate and distinct considera- 
tion ? " He was not yet broken in to our lumping 
method of tariff legislation, everything hotchpotch to- 
12 177 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

gether, the understood, the misunderstood, and the not 
understood. 

The greater part of his speech has been usually con- 
sidered an out and out free trade argument, and as 
such has been greatly admired. It was of this speech 
that Hayne said, in 1830, " Like a mighty giant he 
bore away upon his shoulders the pillars of the temple 
of error and delusion, escaping himself unhurt, and 
leaving his adversaries overwhelmed in its ruins." 

He quoted a good deal from English public men — 
Huskisson, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Ellenborough, and 
Lord Liverpool — who were starting the free trade move- 
ment which fifteen or twenty years afterwards appeared 
in full flower. Webster declared that England was on 
the eve of adopting free trade, that her greatness and 
power were not due to her protective system, but in 
spite of it ; and that this was the opinion of her public 
men. Her prohibitive and monopoly system was still 
allowed to remain because it had existed so long that 
great injury to individuals would follow the taking 
of it ofif ; and this would be our experience if we carried 
protection to an extreme. This was his reason some 
years afterwards for voting in favor of the tariff bill 
of 1828, which gave increased protection to the 
woollen industry. That industry, he argued, having 
been started by protection in 1824 and large capital in- 
vested in it, must be protected by further increase of 
duties in 1828, because its invested capital and existence 
were endangered by changed conditions in European 
trade. That is the difficulty with a protective tariff. 
Once started, where will you stop? 

Like all minute and exhaustive arguments on the 
subject Webster's conclusion was that a nation might be 
very prosperous under protection and also very pros- 
perous under free trade. The Englishmen admitted 
this. Free trade, the unrestricted exchange of commodi- 
ties of varying climates and nations, was the ideal ; 
but it could not always be carried out, because the 

178 



TARIFF OF 1824 

nations would not agree to let it alone. One would see 
an advantage to be gained over a rival by protection. 
Another would wnsh to pass from the condition of a 
mere producer of raw material to the more distinguished 
position of varied manufacturing and make the change 
by the quick process of a protective tariff. Free trade 
would be the best if you could have it, and you should 
keep as close to it as possible, was Webster's doctrine. 

" I think freedom of trade to be the general principle and 
restriction the exception. And it is for any State, taking 
into view its own condition, to judge of the propriety, in any 
case, of making an exception, constantly preferring, as I think 
all wise governments will, not to depart without urgent reasons 
from the general rule." 

Perhaps the nations at the time of our colonial period 
had the shrewdest understanding of the subject. They 
were pretty much all protective ; but some of them would 
at the same time allow complete free trade at one port 
in one of their colonies so as to reap the advantages of 
both policies. 

Much trouble and confusion usually arises from the 
attempt to state one side or the other as an absolute 
truth, an unchangeable principle, something that can be 
settled by science or mathematics. But the wdiole mat- 
ter, like many others in so-called political economy, 
is and always has been a mere question of policy, a 
mere question of local conditions, or, if you please, pure 
opportunism ; and it will never be anything else. 

For political economy as a pretended exact science 
and as taught in professional books Webster always 
had a supreme contempt; and of this his opponents 
complained. He was not, they said, " a scientific legis- 
lator ; " and he certainly never professed to be. 

Though I like the investigation of particular questions,* 
he said, ' I give up what is called " the science of political 
economy." There is no such science. There are no rules on 
these subjects so fixed and invariable as that their aggregate 

179 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

constitutes a science. I believe I have recently run over 
twenty volumes, from Adam Smith to Professor Dew of 
Virginia, and from the whole, if 1 were to pick out with one 
hand all the mere truisms, and with the other all the doubt- 
ful propositions, little would be left.' " (Correspondence, vol. i, 
p. 501.) 

Having laid down the true principle of the relations 
between protection and free trade, the remainder of 
Webster's efforts was directed to showing that the tariff 
of 18 16 had gone far enough in the direction of protec- 
tion, and that most of this bill of 1824 was unnecessary 
or injurious. The shipping interest was already taxed. 
This bill would increase the tax nearly fifty per cent. 
The disasters in the iron business were mentioned as 
reasons for protecting the iron industry ; but the disas- 
ters of commerce were narrated to show that it should 
be abandoned and its capital turned to other objects. 
In fact the American people had made up their minds 
that our merchant marine should be sacrificed ; and yet, 
strange to say, it was strong enough to survive all taxes 
and restrictions and flourish until the time of the Civil 
War. 

The increased duty on glass was about the only one 
he favored. But we cannot here follow out his details, 
instructive though they would be. There are few text- 
books or treatises from which so much enlightening in- 
formation can be obtained, not only on trade but on 
national currency and finance, as in the speeches of 
Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. 

The two men were curiously alike, usually in accord 
in their opinions, evenly matched in reasoning power on 
most subjects, but of course on great questions of con- 
stitutional law and in permanence of literary merit and 
wealth of illustration Webster was by far the superior. 
Plumer, who often listened to them, said that " Web- 
ster has greater power of reasoning and less native 
eloquence than the great western orator. Webster acts 
directly on the understanding; Clay on the under- 

180 



TARIFF OF 1824 

standing through the passions." Yet Clay's rousing 
of the passions was more by his manner than his 
words. He had less imagination than Webster; and, 
of course, as Plumer also says, less acquired knowl- 
edge, less taste, and fewer attainments in law and 
in political science. Clay, as Webster once said of 
him, never browsed in a library. His leisure was more 
given to social excitement, and his great love of con- 
versation and pleasing. Webster, on the other hand, 
was a great browser. He could forget law and politics, 
and even his pet oxen and shotguns, and spend a whole 
day or days in taking down volume after volume, seiz- 
ing tufts and fragments of the choice thoughts of the 
world, to store away and grind into the texture of his 
mind. It is a wholesome process that has nourished 
many a strong intellect.^ 

Nevertheless, Clay's speeches are fine products of 
intellect ; historically invaluable ; full of the vivacity and 
geniality of the popular Harry of the West. His 
famous arraignment of General Jackson is a master- 
piece of sarcasm and contempt ; and he often made up 
for limited range and a less richly stored mind by con- 
ciseness and extreme closeness to the point. In fact, if 
we were making Webster over again, and prepared to 
interfere with the decrees of Providence, it might possi- 
bly be well to put in a drop or two of conciseness. But 
then Webster would say, as he actually did, that the 
strength of his method lay in the abundance of his 
illustrations, in repeating a thought in such various 
and enticing forms that the hearer could not escape 
from it. 

So he voted against Clay's tariff bill of 1824, which 
was passed, but with modifications in the Senate which 
met some of his objections ; and these modifications 
Plumer thinks were largely due to Webster's speech. 



'Lanman, Private Life of Webster, p. 130; Harvey's 
Reminiscences. 

181 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

" During the greater part of his tariff speech the friends 
of the bill seemed to feel as if the whole fabric on which they 
had long labored was tumbling in ruins about their heads ; 
others had spoken well and ingeniously on the subject; some 
with much knowledge of fact, others with a great display of 
philosophical principles. Still the system remained unimpaired, 
or but slightly aflfected ; till Webster, in the pride of conscious 
power, came into the field, beating down as with a giant's club 
the whole array of his opponents' force. They never fully 
recovered from this deadly assault. They indeed carried the 
bill through the House, though not without material altera- 
tions even then ; but they wanted strength, when it came back 
from the Senate, to reject any of the many amendments by 
which that body had materially changed its most important 
provisions." (Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, 
P- 550.) 

Webster had had a modern method of collecting 
information for his speech. He had obtained fifty 
copies of the bill and sent them to merchants, manufac- 
ttirers, farmers, and students requesting their opinions. 
In this way he obtained a great mass of information 
from the ablest men. " He offered me this bundle of 
papers," says Plumer, " out of which half a dozen good 
speeches might, he said, be made." In the same way 
no doubt Webster afterwards studied those problems of 
finance, for the treatment of which he became so famous. 
He often applied to Judge Story for reasoning, facts and 
material in both law and politics ; and no doubt his 
remarkable speeches on finance and the functions of 
money contain the quintessence of the best thought of 
the best bankers of the country. 

While in the midst of his tariff speech a note was 
handed to him saying that the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden 
would be called for argument the next day in the Su- 
preme Court. He was astonished, for he had supposed 
that he had nearly two weeks to prepare himself for 
that famous case. He closed his tariff speech as soon 
as he could, and hurried to his house. He had been up 
before daylight that morning to prepare himself for the 

182 



GIBBONS VS. OGDEN 

tariff debate, and now instead of dining, he took a dose 
of medicine and went to bed. 

"At ten P.M. he awoke, called for a bowl of tea, and 
without other refreshment went immediately to work. To use 
his own phrase, ' the tapes had not been off his papers for more 
than a year.' He worked all night, and, as he has told me more 
than once, he thought he never on any occasion had so com- 
pletely the free use of his faculties. He hardly felt that he 
had bodily organs, so entirely had the fasting and the medicine 
done their work. At nine a.m., after eleven hours of continu- 
ous intellectual effort, his brief was completed. He sent for 
the barber and was shaved ; he took a very light breakfast 
of tea and crackers ; he looked over his papers to see that 
they were all in order, and tied them up — he read the morning 
journals to amuse and change his thoughts, and then he went 
into court and made that argument, which, as Judge Wayne 
said about twenty years afterward, ' released every creek and 
river, every lake and harbor in our country from the inter- 
ference of monopolies.'" (Ticknor's Reminiscences in Curtis's 
Life of Webster, vol. i, p. 217.) 

For thirty-six hours he had been nearly all the time 
in high excitement, had performed intellectual labor far 
beyond the powers of most men, and had had scarcely 
half a meal. It was a magnificent instance of living 
on reserve force. The advocates of an empty stomach 
for intellectual labor no doubt consider it a valuable 
instance for their theory ; but they would have to be 
careful how they apply it to ordinary mortals. Every 
man of high achievement, or, indeed, of ordinary 
achievement, has usually worked out a method of put- 
ting himself in condition for his daily work or for some 
extraordinary effort. With some it is beefsteaks, with 
others fasting ; with some exercise, with others none. 
No general rule can be drawn ; and even physicians con- 
fess their inability to go beyond particular instances. 

This case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, which Webster 
was so suddenly called to, was one of those momentous 
litigations of that time which reached to the roots of the 
Constitution and have made the government of the 

183 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

United States what it now is. It was another discipline 
and training for him in constitutional interpretation ; 
another profound experience like the Dartmouth College 
case; and it was these opportunities that were building 
him up into what is now seen to have been the mission 
of his life. Other lawyers were in these cases ; had 
the same opportunities ; but they had not the natural 
reasoning power and aptitude of language that could 
be developed to the height Webster attained. 

In the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, the Legislature of 
New York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the 
exclusive steamboat navigation of all waters within the 
jurisdiction of that State for a term of years. They 
had obtained an injunction against a steamboat which 
ran between the city of New York and Elizabethtown, 
in New Jersey, for an infringement of their monopoly, 
and the question was whether this vessel, which navi- 
gated the waters of both New York and New Jersey, 
was within the jurisdiction of Congress, which by 
the Constitution is given power to regulate commerce 
between the States. Even if New York could grant a 
monopoly of navigation of its own waters, could such a 
monopoly restrain a vessel engaged in interstate com- 
merce? The courts of New York, including its court 
of last resort, had sustained the injunction and had 
decided that the grant of monopoly was no infringement 
of the right of Congress to regulate comjiierce between 
the States. 

This was probably the most far-reaching decision 
on the side of monopoly that has ever been made in this 
country. It in effect allowed every State to interfere 
with and cut up the navigable waters of the Union 
that happened to run through its territory in a way 
that would have made the free and unrestricted naviga- 
tion of our time an impossibility. It was a virtual 
dissolution of the Union, at least in a commercial sense. 
But only a few minds realized this. Most people had 

184 



GIBBONS VS. OGDEN 

not then been educated up to a full understanding of 
all the phases the subject could assume. 

We have since then had vast struggles with monopo- 
lies, and we are still in the midst of them. But when 
the Supreme Court at Washington reversed the decision 
of the New York court of last resort in Gibbons z's. 
Ogden, it undoubtedly cut off a stupendous source of 
one of the worst kinds of monopoly of which it is pos- 
sible to conceive. The Supreme Court held that the 
navigable waters of the country are under the exclusive 
control of the Union and of Congress ; no State can 
monopolize even that portion of them which lies within 
her borders. The jurisdiction of Congress over them is 
exclusive and not concurrently in Congress and the 
States. 

Possibly the National Supreme Court would have 
taken this broad view of its own accord, no matter 
what lawyer had argued against the monopoly. But as 
Webster was the lawyer on whom the task fell, he has 
been usually regarded as having won for us this most 
important safeguard of the stability of the American 
Union. His argument involved an exhaustive investi- 
gation of the history and nature of the power of Con- 
gress over commerce. This was in many respects the 
most important power under the Constitution ; it was 
concerned with the subject which had led to the adop- 
tion of the Constitution ; for it was the confusion of 
commercial regulations by the States and the difficulty, 
if not the impossibility, of dealing with them which led 
to the calling of the convention of 1787. Webster's 
reasoning on the question, as we read it in his published 
works, would be hard to excel ; it made the decision of 
the New York court, though an ably worded one, seem 
like rank absurdity. 

About three years afterwards he argued another 
famous case. Ogden vs. Saunders, raising the question 
whether a State Legislature could pass a bankruptcy 

185 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

act discharging a debtor from his obligations without 
violating the provision of the National Constitution, 
that no State can pass an act impairing the obligation 
of a contract. Webster had the side against the State 
and established the now long accepted doctrine that only 
Congress can pass a bankruptcy act. 

These three cases between 1818 and 1827 — the Dart- 
mouth College case, Gibbons vs. Ogden, and Ogden vs. 
Saunders — not to mention minor ones, took Webster 
through an experience of constitutional investigation 
and reasoning to which his powerful mind responded in 
a marvellous degree. It is doubtful if there was another 
mind in the country that could have so responded. 
When we add to it his experience in the Massachusetts 
Constitutional Convention, and in Congress, we can 
understand better his fame from the replies to Hayne 
and Calhoun and how he became known as the defender 
of the Union and the expounder of American principles 
of government. 



186 



VII 



FIELD SPORTS — DISCOVERY OF MARSHFIELD VISIT TO 

JEFFERSON — LOSS OF HIS SON 

Webster was much exhausted by his labors in Con- 
gress and the Supreme Court in that winter and spring 
of 1824. He had grown thin and emaciated. 

" We have had a busy time of it," he writes to Judge 
Story, " since you left us. For myself I am exhausted. 
When I look in the glass I think of our old New England 
saying, ' as thin as a shad.' I have not vigor enough left, 
either mental or physical, to try an action for assault and 
battery." 

The redgods were calhng him and he was longing 
for his rod and gun. In moving from the interior of 
New Hampshire to the seacoast he had added largely 
to his tastes for sports afield. He had learned about the 
wild fowl, the fascination of beach bird shooting, the 
plover, the calico birds, the yellow legs, the curlew, and 
the snipe. He had a crony in Boston, Mr. George 
Blake, the United States District Attorney, from whose 
clutches, it is said, criminals had sometimes escaped be- 
cause their prosecvitor was more busy with thoughts 
afield than in preparing for their conviction. So Web- 
ster writes to him for sympathy, says he is not so 
reduced but that he could walk with a bit of iron on his 
shoulder, and asks if Mr. Blake is ever found driving 
with an umbrella in his chaise. 

Umbrella was the name given by Blake to his shot- 
gun when in its case ; for lawyers of a sporting turn have 
to resort to many legal fictions in a community which 
regards them as fit only for hard work. The story 
is told of a rather distinguished lawyer who had an 
unrestrainable fancy for baseball matches, and used 

187 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

habitually to leave word with his clerks on such occa- 
sions that he had gone to argue a case in the Supreme 
Court of New Jersey. 

Webster's high reputation enabled him to be a little 
bolder. He developed himself in the sporting world, 
as years and his widening acquaintance gave him oppor- 
tunity, until it was a well-recognized part of his charac- 
ter and part of his popularity with the public. To the 
end of his life he would often spend an evening of 
most absorbed happiness in very unnecessary cleaning 
and tinkering of his guns. He had pet names for them 
arising from their qualities or circumstances. One was 
Mrs. Patrick, another Learned Selden, and one, of all 
things in the world, Wilmot Proviso.^ 

It is, no doubt, a reversion to the old type of the 
race, this fascination for hunting, this joy in the very 
sight of the weapons, wdiich even the most artificially 
civilized person feels at times so strongly that his 
occupation at his roll-top desk seems as if it were after 
all a waste of time and not a man's work. And then 
all the world loves a hunter; he makes almost as strong 
an appeal to the popular imagination as the soldier. 
For so many thousand years we lived that life, we came 
home empty-handed to meet the disappointed looks of 
the women and children, and spend a cold and cheerless 
evening in the cave ; or we came home staggering under 
our burden and threw it down before the cave, and 
all was joy and shouts of laughter, and we were the 
great man, the only sort of great man the swarming little 
ones and the women knew ; and the fires were soon 
burning and the feast was prepared ; and all the next 
day we rested in the sweet repose of tired health, dream- 
ing over again that ennobling struggle with nature's 
forces of the day before. There were so many hun- 
dred thousand years of this that it Vv'ill take several hun- 
dred thousand more of spiritually minded civilization to 
kill that old fire in our blood. 

^ Harvey,' Reminiscences, p. 283. 

188 



FIELD SPORTS 

Webster was fond of cluck shooting, and added deer 
hunting- to his amusements. A pair of the now extinct 
species of Labrador ducks was shot by him in Vineyard 
Island off the coast of Massachusetts, and sent to Audu- 
bon, the naturalist, who had never before seen this 
species. Audubon's drawing was made from the two 
sent to him by Webster, and they are now in the collec- 
tion of the National Museum at Washington. ^ 

He may possibly have reached the real height of 
sport, the shooting of quail, and the ruflfed grouse of 
New England, and the prairie chickens of the West 
over pointers and setters. That phase of human hap- 
piness is supposed to have been little known to New 
Englanders in his time. It was the southern planter 
and the Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers who im- 
ported the finest strains of bird dogs and the most 
expensive shotguns in the period before the Civil War. 
At least, so we are informed by Mr. Wise in his " His- 
tory of the Pointer in America," and being both a 
southerner and a northerner he ought to know. 

In both Lanman's and Lyman's reminiscences there 
are references to quail being rather numerous about 
Marshfield, but I have been unable to find any very posi- 
tive evidence of Webster being much interested in this 
sort of sport. There is a sentence in one of his letters 
written in August, 1846, to his man at Marshfield, which, 
at first, seems to imply that he was a wing shot over 
dogs. " If not done already," he writes, " I wish you to 
put the curlew all right and make that dog point better." 
The curlew was one of his sailboats, and making that 
dog point better, may have referred to getting the boat 
to point closer to the wind. Lyman, however, in de- 
scribing his visit says, " He offered me Rachel, a 
favorite setter, which he brought from England, and the 
services of an attendant, if I chose to go out and shoot 
quails, with one restriction, however, that several broods 



* Elliott's Wild Fowl of North America, p. 172. 

189 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of these birds had been reared during the season in the 
gardens and grounds near the house; that these be- 
longed to the family, and were not to be destroyed.^ 

He was very fond of trout fishing, and made a close 
study of its details, lines, hooks ; and his favorite rod 
he named Old Killall. Here is one of his trout letters 
from Sandwich, on Cape Cod : 

Dear Sir: I send you eight or nine trout, which I took 
yesterday, in that chief of all brooks Mashpee. I made a long 
day of it and with good success, for me. John was with me, 
full of good advice, but did not fish nor carry a rod. 
I took 26 trout, all weighing 17 pounds 12 ounces. 
The largest (you have him) weighed at 

Crocker's 2 pounds 8 ounces 

The five largest 8 pounds 5 ounces 

The eight largest 11 pounds 8 ounces 

I got them by following your advice ; that is, by careful 
and thorough fishing of the difficult places which others do 
not so fish. (Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 677.) 

The letter goes on with details of methods, hooks, 
and sly jokes on his friends, entirely too long to quote. 
He laid out the summer of 1824 to be spent in complete 
recreation. 

" The ensuing summer," he wrote to his brother, " I shall 
do nothing but move about and play. I shall certainly spend 
a fortnight with you at Boscawen, and the rest you may spend 
with us. August we will pass together on Cape Cod. My 
wife wants some one to ride about with her, while I am 
shooting." 

They went to Sandwich, on Cape Cod, in summer, 
he elsewhere says, from 1820 to 1827.* As he and his 
wife were driving back to Boston at the close of the 
summer of 1824 in a New England chaise, they followed 
the shore road, and when thirty-four miles from Boston 
were about passing by the farm overlooking the sea in 
Marshfield Township, which afterwards became so inti- 

* Works, National Ed., vol. xvi, p. 465 ; Lyman's Memorials, 
vol. ii, pp. 96, 105. 

* Works, National Edition, vol. xiii, p. 551. 

190 



DISCOVERY OF MARSHFIELD 

mately associated with Webster's name. The farm was 
the property of Captain John Thomas, whose ancestor in 
Revohitionary times had been a loyahst and fled to Nova 
Scotia. The land of the farm was about one hundred 
and sixty acres, not fertile, but beautifully situated 
between the hills and the marshes inside the sea beach. 
Mrs. Webster was the first to be attracted by the ex- 
treme beauty of the spot, and she urged her husband to 
turn in at the gate and pay a visit to the family.^ The 
visit was so mutually agreeable that the Thomases per- 
suaded them to remain for several days ; and for many 
summers after that they spent part of their holiday at 
the Thomas house, no doubt staying longer after 1827, 
when they gave up Sandwich, until at last they bought 
the Thomas place, adding to it hundreds of surrounding 
acres, and made it their home. It became typical of the 
great statesman, the resort of his friends and admirers 
all his life, and still the resort of pilgrims. 

When he was re-elected to Congress in the autumn 
of 1824 by a good majority and returned to Washington, 
Webster went with Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor on a visit to 
Jefferson and Madison, at their plantations in Virginia. 
Both of these elderly men had formed a high opinion 
of Webster and were glad to see him. The visit was in 
some respects a step back into the past, and a glimpse 
of the old life of cultivation, books, and ease which had 
been led by prominent people on their great isolated 
estates, the remains of the old colonial aristocracy that 
had made the Revolution and the National Government 
possible and was now slowly giving place to the new 
type of modern times. 



° Harvey, in his Reminiscences, p. 265, says that Webster, 
finding the game growing scarce at Sandwich on Cope Cod, had 
been recommended to the farm of Captain Thomas as a place 
affording good sport ; that Webster was intending to visit it 
on this drive home, and that Mrs. Webster, when attracted by 
the beauty of the place, was not aware that it was the farm 
they were seeking. 

191 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

In this respect Mr. Ticknor's account of the excur- 
sion is of permanent value ; but too long to quote. They 
travelled by wagon over the rough roads and in the rat- 
tling tumble-down vehicles which have been found 
in the southern country ever since. They rode on horse- 
back when staying with their hosts, wondering at the 
scarceness of the population and the cheerlessness of 
everything off the great plantations that were well 
kept up. 

" We rode through woods and across fields, Mr. Webster 
making himself merry as he had the day before with wondering 
where ' Phil. Barbour's constituents could be,' for this was Mr. 
Philip Barbour's district. Before we returned, however, we 
made a visit to Mrs. Barbour, to whom Mr. Webster gave an 
account of her husband, whom he had left in Washington, 
which visibly interested her." (Curtis, vol. i, p. 223.) 

Webster had long talks with both the distinguished 
veterans on the old Congress and the Revolution, and 
no doubt, filled his mind with valuable constitutional 
lore from Madison. Jefferson was then eighty-one 
years old, but rode on horseback every day in fine 
weather, and was busy superintending the building of 
the University of Virginia wliich he had founded. 
Webster and the Ticknors, on the way home, wrote out 
their recollection of a great deal Jefferson had said 
about the Revolution and its characters, but, being rather 
against the popular view, it has not been much used by 
historians. 

A couple of extracts from Webster's letters to the 
Ticknors must be given to show his intimacy with them 
and the sort of man he had become. 

" I find that you are really gone ; and if I could tell you 
hov/ sorry I am I would. I passed the house yesterday, and 
gave a look to the windows, but saw no inviting faces. . . . 

" If my constituents accuse me of negligence and inatten- 
tion this session, I shall lay it all off on Mrs. Ticknor. She 
had no right, I shall say, to be so agreeable as to draw my 
attention from the mighty affairs of state while she was here,, 
and to create depression or a kind of I-am-not-quite-ready-to- 

192 



LOSS OF HIS SON 

go-to-work feeling by her departure. What will State Street 
say to it, think you, if its affairs should be neglected, although 
Shakespeare be ever so well read, or all the versions of Sir 
John Moore's burial revised and corrected?" 

" I write this in the House, while Mr. Clay is speaking on 
the Cumberland Road. The ladies are all present, inside the 
House. I have not reviewed them; for I am sure there is 
none of them that I have lately seen or know, unless it be 
Mrs. (A. H.) Everett. I see Wallenstein among them, as 
becomes a diplomatist. Mr. Clay speaks well. I wish you 
were here to hear him. The highest enjoyment, almost, which 
I have in life, is in hearing an able argument or speech. The 
development of mind in those modes is delightful. In books, 
we see the result of thought and of fancy. In the living 
• speaker, we see the thought itself, as it rises in the speaker's 
own mind. And his countenance often indicates a perception 
before it gets upon his tongue." (Curtis, vol. i, pp. 227, 231.) 

That same winter Webster lost his son, Charles, 
in Boston, a child two years old, a sad grief to both 
parents, and some stanzas of verse which he sent to his 
wife reveal a side of the great orator's character not 
often brought to notice. 

" The staff on which my years should lean 
Is broken ere those years come o'er me; 
My funeral rites thou shouldst have seen. 
But thou art in the tomb before me. 

" Thou rear'st to me no filial stone, 

No parent's grave with tears beholdest; 
Thou art my ancestor — my son I ! 

And stand'st in heaven's account the oldest. 

" On earth my lot was soonest cast. 
Thy generation after mine ; 
Thou hast thy predecessor passed, 
Earlier eternity is thine. 

" I should have set before thine eyes 

The road to heaven, and showed it clear; 
But thou, untaught, springest to the skies, 
And leav'st thy teacher lingering here. 

" Sweet seraph, I would learn of thee, 

And hasten to partake thy bliss ! 

And, Oh ! to thy world welcome me, 

As first I welcomed thee to this." 

13 193 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The construction of these verses is reminiscent of 
Latin and of the EngHsh writers that followed such 
models, and shows how thoroughly Webster had studied 
and formed himself on those schools. One of Mrs. 
Webster's letters to her husband at this time gives us a 
valuable glimpse of her character. 

" I have a great desire to write to you, my beloved hus- 
band, but I doubt if I can write legibly, as I can hold my pen 
but in my fingers. I have just received your letter, in answer 
to William's, which told you that little Charley was no more. 
I have dreaded the hour which should destroy your hopes, but 
trust you will not let this event afflict you too much, and that 
we both shall be able to resign him without a murmur, happy 
in the reflection that he has returned to his Heavenly Father, 
pure as I received him. It was an inexpressible consolation 
to me, when I contemplated him in his sickness, that he had. 
not one regret for the past, nor one dread for the future; hel 
was patient as a lamb during all his sufferings ; and they were 
at last so great, I was happy when they were ended. 

" I shall always reflect on his brief life with mournful 
pleasure, and, I hope, remember with gratitude all the joy he 
gave me; and it has been great." . . . (Curtis, vol. i, pp. 
228, 229.) 



104 



VIII 

BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION — CRIMES ACT — ENGLISH 

FRIENDS BUNKER HILL ADDRESS NIAGARA 

— EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON 

Politics were not of the usual partisan type in those 
times. There was no formal nomination of the candi- 
dates for the Presidency by party conventions. The 
curious condition of affairs in this era of good feeling 
and overwhelming Democratic ascendency is shown 
by the six names, all of them Democrats, and 
all of them at first considered as having about equal 
chances for the Presidency — John Quincy Adams, Gen- 
eral Jackson. Calhoun, Clay, Crawford, and Clinton. 

The candidacy of Jackson and his increasing popu- 
larity were an astonishment to everybody, including 
himself. It was the first revelation of the passion of 
our people for a mere soldier candidate and for a certain 
crude form of democracy and demagogism. Jackson 
had the very great distinction of conquering the small 
British force which in the War of 1812 had attempted 
to take New Orleans. It was a victory over a very 
incompetent and blundering British general, and the 
battle had no effect on the war because it was fought 
after peace had been declared. But these considerations 
did not in the least dim the glory of it in the popular 
mind. 

He had conducted with eminent success the war 
upon the Creeks and Cherokees in Alabama and against 
the Seminoles and Spaniards in Florida. But these 
wars were against very inferior foes. The Seminoles 
of Florida numbered only 700 fighting men, and his 
war against them cost $20,000,000, most of it, of course, 
squandered, or stolen by agents and officials.^ The Span- 

^ Works, National Edition, vol, xiii, p. 137. 

195 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

iards in Florida were so weak and so evidently at the 
mercy of the United States that Florida was bought from 
Spain for $5,000,000. These absurdly easy victories were 
exaggerated by spreadeagleism, until among the masses 
of our people Napoleon seemed nothing compared with 
Jackson. He had executed without excuse, as was 
generally believed, two British subjects, and had acted 
with such arbitrary violence and intemperate self-will 
that Henry Clay and other prominent leaders denounced 
him without measure in Congress ; and, while his mili- 
tary success was freely admitted, he was generally re- 
garded by the conservative classes in the Eastern and 
Middle States as totally unfit by training, tempera- 
ment, and experience for the Presidency. 

He was altogether the most extraordinary man that 
has ever appeared in American politics. Very tall, over 
six feet, and holding himself very erect, he was, how- 
ever, not much thicker than a match. Of not a vigorous 
constitution, suffering from serious ill health most of his 
mature life, finally consumptive, supported through one 
of his military campaigns by his physicians bathing him 
in lead water every few hours to keep down inflamma- 
tion, he had, nevertheless, a nervous force and an in- 
domitable spirit that almost set disease at defiance, that 
drove him into every imaginable enterprise and danger, 
and to which was added a Scotch-Irish shrewdness that 
always brought him out safe. 

One of his peculiarities was a passion for duels, 
street fights, and brawls of every description, and these 
had given him a reputation among the fighting class 
in the southwest. He loved homicide, and always ex- 
hibited on his mantelpiece at the Hermitage, the pistol 
with which he had killed Mr. Dickinson. To visitors 
who examined the weapon he frankly told the fact. 
Besides his numerous duels he had a street fight with 
Benton and Benton's brother, from which he carried 
for many years a pistol bullet in his shoulder; and in 
some of his brawls he boasted of having used sticks and 
fence rails. 

196 



BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION 

His manners and dress have been described by some 
of his contemporaries as slovenly and disgusting. He 
has been described, when President and receiving vis- 
itors, as chewing and spitting tobacco, unshaven, and 
regardless of his clothes, or smoking an enormous pipe. 
Others have described him as exactly the reverse ; punc- 
tilious in costume, most agreeable in manner, and capa- 
ble of entertaining and delightful conversation. The 
curious part about this is that both sides seem to have 
told the truth. He could play or pose in any role, 
coarse or refined, and did it repeatedly. In spite of his 
slovenliness on some occasions there is no doubt that 
he could dress to perfection ; and, of course, if he had 
not possessed personal attractiveness of some kind he 
could never have reached the position he attained. 

There is, fortunately, an anecdote that shows him 
in both roles on the same occasion. When James 
Buchanan brought to the White House to present to him 
a very distinguished lady, he found the President alone, 
his face covered with a bristling beard of several days' 
growth, in a soiled dressing gown very much the worse 
for wear, and smoking an old clay pipe. On remonstrat- 
ing with him, he received for answer: "Buchanan, I knew 
a man once who succeeded admirably and made a for- 
tune simply by minding his own business." Jackson, 
however, retired, and soon returned neatly shaven, in 
faultless attire, and full of courtly dignity. He entered 
into a most agreeable conversation with the lady, and 
Buchanan was greatly surprised " when more than an 
hour had passed and she was still talking with the man 
she had dreaded to meet as one but little better than a 
wild-cat." 2 

On another occasion, when about to sit down to din- 
ner, he was telling war stories to some of his old cronies 
in very unprintable language. His wife, who had re- 
cently become religious and joined the church, inter- 
rupted him to ask a blessing before dinner; and he 

' Brady, The True Andrew Jackson, pp. i53~i5S- 

197 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

immediately stopped, asked the blessing, and then went 
on with the unprintable language. In the last years 
of his life he also experienced a conversion and joined 
the church. He and his wife, to whom he was most 
devotedly attached, were not infrequently seen sitting 
together after dinner, each smoking a long reed pipe. 

He had followed farming, store-keeping, saddlery, 
and various occupations in the southwest, and among 
them had been a lawyer, but principally on the criminal 
side of the court. He was very ignorant of law and still 
more ignorant of finance, business, and government. 
He was, however, one of the keenest judges of human 
nature and a most consummate actor of the parts and 
poses that the politics of that day required. The West 
and South, and not a few in the North and East, were 
becoming frantic with enthusiasm for him ; and he 
played them to the top of their bent. It became one 
of the standing jokes of the time, that if anyone at- 
tempted to reason with such people, one of them would 
shout " Hurrah for Jackson " ; then all would throw up 
their hats, and reasoning would cease. For years after 
his death there were, it is said, old people in country 
districts who would still vote for him so as " to make 
sure they were right." 

Webster favored Calhoun, although he and Calhoun 
in after years were by no means in accord. V/hen he 
saw that the choice for the Presidency was turning 
towards either Adams or Jackson, he wrote to his 
brother Ezekiel in New Hampshire : " I hope all New 
England will support Mr. Calhoun for the Vice-Presi- 
dency. If so, he will probably be chosen, and that will 
be a great thing. He is a true man, and will do good 
to the country in that situation." 

The Presidential election of that autumn of 1824 
resulted in Mr, Calhoun being chosen Vice-President 
by a large majority of the electors ; but in the voting 
for President, General Jackson had ninety-nine elec- 
toral votes, John Ouincy Adams eighty-four, Crawford 

198 



BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION 

forty-one, and Clay thirty-seven. None of the candi- 
dates having received a majority, the choice had to be 
decided by the House of Representatives, voting by 
States, on the three highest candidates — Jackson, 
Adams, and Crawford. All were Democrats ; and the 
friends of Clay gave their votes to Adams, and elected 
him. 

Before the election was decided in the House of 
Representatives there were certain contingencies quite 
obvious to politicians. Clay was out of the contest 
and could not be voted upon because he had not received 
enough electoral votes; but he was Speaker of the 
House, his influence large, and he might have his 
friends and followers vote for either Adams or Jack- 
son. In short, he and his followers held the balance 
of power and could elect either of the candidates they 
chose. They would probably elect Adams, because 
Clay was opposed to Jackson, believing him purely a 
military character, and unfit for the Presidency. 

If Jackson were elected he might continue Adams in 
the office of Secretary of State ; or he might appoint Clay 
Secretary of State, especially if Clay helped to elect 
him. Likewise, if Clay helped to elect Adams, the said 
Adams might make Clay his secretary. The secretary 
of stateship at that time usually led to the Presidency ; 
was generally spoken of as the stepping stone to the 
Presidency. 

James Buchanan, a friend of Jackson, visited Clay, 
and in delicate language suggested that Clay would 
become Secretary of State if he would support Jack- 
son. Clay cut the hint off short by showing that he 
would have nothing to do wath such an arrangement.^ 

On the 28th day of January, 1825, sometime before 
the election in the House, a letter was published in a 
Philadelphia newspaper announcing the anonymous 
writer's suspicions of an infamous plot ; that the friends 

' Colton, Life and Times of Clay, vol. 1, p. 418. 

199 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of Adams had approached the friends of Clay and 
offered the secretaryship of state for an election ; and 
the friends of Clay then went to the friends of Jackson 
and said that if they would offer the same price they 
would close with them. But the friends of Jackson, 
being of lofty Roman virtue, rejected with the contempt 
it deserved the mean offer of " bargain and corrup- 
tion." Henry Clay and his followers had, therefore, 
it was understood, gone over to Adams and would 
secure his election. 

This story was spread through all the newspapers, 
and Clay from his place in Congress openly branded 
it as a lie, demanded the name of the author, and im- 
plied that the controversy had better be settled by a 
duel. The author disclosed himself, George Kremer, 
a somewhat eccentric member of Congress, much stared 
at in Washington for wearing a curious leopard skin 
overcoat, a man of very moderate ability coming from 
that part of the population of Pennsylvania known as 
" the Pennsylvania Dutch." It was soon seen that he 
had not written the letter of his own motion; he was 
a mere dupe of the Jackson managers, and not in the 
class of life with whom men like Clay fought duels. 
He announced in Congress that he was ready to prove 
the statements in the letter; and when a committee was 
appointed, refused to appear before the committee. He 
admitted in conversation that he did not write the letter; 
that he had not intended to accuse Mr. Clay of corrupt 
conduct; was wilHng to apologize to Mr. Clay; would 
appeal the whole matter to a higher tribunal than 
Congress, meaning the people; and in short, jumped 
about as the Jackson managers pulled the wires. Clay 
could not fight a duel with such a creature, who, Web- 
ster wrote to his brother, was a man " with whom one 
would think of having a shot about as soon as with your 
neighbor, Mr. Simeon Atkinson, whom he somewhat 
resembles." Clay wanted the man who had really 
written tlie letter; but he would never disclose himself, 

200 




PORTRAIT OF WEBSTER BY HARDING 
In the possession of Dr. Guy Hinsdale 



I 



I 



BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION 

though Clay always believed it was Jackson's friend, 
Senator Eaton, of Tennessee. 

The object of the scheme was, of course, to frighten 
Clay and his friends from voting for Adams ; but it 
had not the slightest effect. They voted for Adams ; 
he was elected ; and he made Clay his Secretary of 
State just as the dupe Kremer had said he would. 
There Clay seems to have made a mistake. He would 
have saved himself a world of trouble if he had avoided 
fulfilling the prophecy of his enemies. But there is 
very little use of saying that. Having made no arrange- 
ment or bargain with Adams, he scorned any precau- 
tion, and believed the whole thing would blow over 
and be forgotten in a year. 

It lasted all his life; it may have prevented his 
attaining the Presidency ; he never got through defend- 
ing himself. Prominent and sensible people of every 
party, Webster, Adams, Benton, and others declared 
him innocent, and gladly furnished proof of his inno- 
cence; but it was of no use. The Jackson party had a 
cry, " that bargain corruption to sell the Presidency," 
and it worked like magic among the masses who at that 
time were more credulous and more easily trapped by 
demagoguery and tricks than they have ever been be- 
fore or since. 

Jackson declared the story true and that having the 
largest electoral vote, and being the favorite of the 
popular majority, he had been cheated out of the 
Presidency by Clay's " bargain and corruption." Called 
upon by Clay for proof, he said that Buchanan had 
told him so. Buchanan, then obliged to come forward, 
explained that in a conversation with General Jackson 
he told the General of a report that if elected he would 
appoint Adams as his Secretary of State ; that the report 
was injurious, and, if untrue, should be contradicted ; 
and that the General then contradicted it and said that 
he had never intimated whom he would appoint, and if 
elected intended to go into office untrammelled by 
promises. 

201 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

This was a denial of Jackson's statement, and was 
supposed to be a severe blow to him. But nothing 
was ever a blow to Jackson that did not kill him. 
He afterwards, in a somewhat equivocal way, denied 
the truth of Buchanan's words, and declared that 
Buchanan had wanted him to say that he would appoint 
Clay Secretary of State.* 

Buchanan, it will be remembered, had gone to Clay 
in the beginning and offered him the Secretar}'ship of 
State if he would support Jackson. Clay, smarting 
under unjust accusation, was on the point several times 
of making public this attempt. Buchanan always 
begged him not to do it; said it would ruin him; and 
Clay, with characteristic generosity, refrained; but 
communicated it to his biographer, Colton. 

The episode is discreditable, but its details must be 
understood, because it had a vast influence in the poli- 
tics of the next twenty-five years. It was one of the 
most extraordinarily povv^erful political cries that have 
ever been known. It could be applied to all sorts of pur- 
poses and persons far beyond its original application ; 
and in the Great Debate of 1830, Hayne attempted to 
involve Webster in it. 

At the time of the election of Adams in Congress, 
Webster had been somewhat doubtful how he should 
vote. His old party, the Federalists, disliked Adams, 
who had become more or less of a Democrat ; but then 
the Federalists had in effect no existence and had no 
candidate in the field. He disliked Jackson, whose 
claims he considered based on the mere popularity of 
military success at the close of the War of 1812. He 
would have preferred Calhoun for President. He had a 
great admiration for that statesman, and in his letters 
frequently spoke of him as a true man. But as Calhoun 
was Vice-President, and as all the New England States 

*See generally on this subject, Parton's Jackson, vol. iii. 
Chap. X; Colton's Life and Times of Clay; Rogers' True 
Henry Clay, Chap. X. 

202 



CRIMES ACT 

had given their electoral votes to John Quincy Adams, 
and as Webster had nothing particular against him, he 
felt it his duty to follow the evident wishes of New 
England. 

The peculiar political situation of the time in this 
era of good feeling, with the Federalist party extinct, 
is shown when we find Webster at last deciding to 
vote for Adams, only because, after an interview with 
him, Adams in effect promised that he would ignore 
old party distinctions, and not only refrain from pro- 
scribing or offending any of the old Federal party, but 
would make one or two conspicuous appointments from 
among them. For the next four years Webster became 
an administration man ; that is to say, in effect a Demo- 
crat, as nearly everybody was at that time ; and he 
was regarded as one of the principal defenders of the 
President in the House of Representatives. 

But nothing of great moment occurred in those four 
years to bring out Webster's powers. His time was 
divided between Congress and practice in the Supreme 
Court. This was indeed his hfe for the rest of his 
days, except when he was Secretary of State. From 
December until June Congress and the court kept him 
very, busy, with very little time for the recreations and 
reading which he loved. In summer and autumn he 
broke loose into country life at Cape Cod, interfered 
with a good deal, however, as autumn approached by 
demands for his legal services in the courts of Massa- 
chusetts. 

We need not enlarge on his advocacy during those 
four years of internal improvements by Congress, build- 
ing of roads, and improving water ways, or of his 
preparing and securing the passage of the Crimes Act 
of 1825, which was a recodifying and amending to date 
of the criminal statutes of Congress. All this was im- 
portant work at the time and added to his reputation. 
The Crimes Act has usually been regarded as one of his 
monuments, was at one time known by his name, and 

203 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

has stood the test of time. The statutes of Congress 
defining crimes against the National Government were 
in very much the same condition in which the first 
Congress had left them. There were serious defects 
in them, and they required to be brought up to the 
development of the government and changed times. 
This was a difficult undertaking and required great 
political tact ; for the Democratic and States rights feel- 
ing of the country was very jealous of the criminal 
jurisdiction of the National Government. Webster suc- 
ceeded. He was good in some kinds of political tact, 
especially in not giving unnecessary offense, and in the 
strategy of the legal advocate. But he perhaps could 
never have rivalled Henry Clay in that statesman's 
particular form of subtlety which carried so much com- 
plicated and seemingly impossible legislation through 
Congress. Webster would hardly have cared for so 
much running about and conversation. Clay was 
always, they say, " talking, dining and receiving." The 
details of Webster's work on the Crimes Act were prob- 
ablv very interesting; but we seem to know little or 
nothing about them. Very likely Judge Story helped 
him. We find him writing to the Judge in this year 
for help to draft a bankrupt law.^ 

He has been sometimes criticized for always attack- 
ing and resisting, and seldom, if ever, associating him- 
self with the positive establishment of any great piece of 
beneficial legislation. He had no instinct, Francis Lie- 
ber said, for the massive movements of mankind; he 
was not a leader, originator, or conceiver like Clay; 
he was greatest only when battling down a proposition 
or as its champion. There is a slight amount of truth 
in this, and the critics might now go farther and say 
that one of the most beneficial pieces of legislation in his 
time, the sub-treasury plan, still in force, was resisted 
and ridiculed by him as the absurdit y of all absurdities.^ 

"Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. Il6. 
* Lieber, Life and Letters, p. 256. 

204 



CRIMES ACT 

Clay stands for the protective tariff of 1824, and to a 
great extent for the principle of protection to American 
industries. Webster resisted protection in 1824 and 
accepted it unwilHngly in 1828. Clay stands for the 
Missouri compromise in 1820, the nullification compro- 
mise of 1833, and the slavery compromise of 1850, He 
prepared all those compromises and engineered them 
through Congress with a skill that Webster possibly 
may have had, but seldom cared to exercise. He pre- 
ferred usually to rely on his oratory alone. He opposed 
Clay's Missouri compromise of 1820. He opposed the 
nullification compromise of 1833, but favored that of 
1850 with such conspicuous brilliancy that the wrath of 
the free-soilers and abolitionists was turned from Clay 
to him. He drafted a judiciary bill and a bankruptcy 
bill, neither of which passed. He advocated for a long 
time the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the 
United States, which was never accomplished. 

Of positive legislation the Crimes Act was all his 
own ; and also the law for removing from State to 
Federal courts all cases involving questions with foreign 
governments; also the measure of 1815, compelling all 
payments by the government to be made in national 
currency instead of depreciated State bank paper. He 
always advocated internal improvements by the general 
government, and that was certainly successful and bene- 
ficial legislation with which his name is connected ; but, 
of course, it was not his invention or the invention of 
anyone in particular. He assisted materially in estab- 
lishing the rule in the departments at Washington, that 
our diplomatic papers and negotiations with foreign 
governments must be conducted from the point of view 
of the whole country and not on the basis of partisan 
politics. Last, but not least, he was the author of the 
Ashburton Treaty with England in 1842, which was 
legislation of a very high order, settling the northeastern 
boundary dispute, impressment of sailors, and the right 
of visit, which were questions that had been in dispute 

205 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

between the two countries for half a century and were 
expected to lead to war. 

In the times in which he lived there was as much 
good to be done in preventing as in forwarding legisla- 
tion. A large part of his career was devoted to battling 
down the wild financial schemes of President Jackson 
and his party, and in explaining and expounding to the 
American people the true principles of sound money 
and sound finance. Another large part of his career, 
probably the most important, was spent in battling down 
the southern doctrines of nullification and secession, in- 
creasing American love of union and giving the people 
arguments and ideas for supporting the Union and the 
Constitution. His constitutional arguments in Gibbons 
vs. Ogden, and notably in the Dartmouth College case, 
created a whole world of judicial decisions under which 
we are still living. All this was not exactly legislation 
in the strict sense; but it was protection of the Con- 
stitution on which legislation is based, and it has fur- 
nished the ideas and principles on which the Civil War 
was carried through and on which the modern amend- 
ments to the Constitution and a large part of legislation 
of the last half century, as well as the decisions of the 
courts, are based. Webster was essentially a man of 
ideas and of convincing people of ideas. He knew his 
strong point and confined himself to it. If by reason- 
ing and emotion he could convince the people of an 
idea, he willingly left the drafting of its legislation to 
the future.'^ 

^ Another piece of beneficial legislation should perhaps be 
mentioned to his credit. " I was ten days," he said in a 
speech at Syracuse, "a member of the Massachusetts legisla- 
ture and I turned my thoughts to the search of some good 
object in which I could be useful in that position, and after 
much reflection I introduced a bill which, with the general 
consent of both houses, passed into a law, and is now a law 
of the State which enacts that no man in the State shall catch 
trout in any other manner than in the old way, with an ordinary 
hook and line." Lanman, p. 129; Works, National Edition, 
vol. xiii, p. 422. 

206 



ENGLISH FRIENDS 

As a man of cultivation and extensive knowledge in 
literature and history he was profoundly interested in 
England, the life of her people, and the doings of her 
Parliament and public men in this critical time when 
the \\ hig or Liberal party was working itself back 
into power, and free trade doctrines and reforms of 
old Tory restraints were the great subjects of discus- 
sion. It is difficult for intelligent Americans of Anglo- 
Saxon stock to be without this interest. In those days, 
perhaps even more than now, their whole education at 
school and college, and the books they read for amuse- 
ment, were essentially English and gave them glimpses 
of the mother country which incited them to seek a 
closer acquaintance. Webster's unusually wide read- 
ing in English literature naturally produced in him a 
very strong desire to visit England, and for a number 
of years he tried in a moderate way to be sent as min- 
ister to London. Like Motley, Lowell, Hawthorne, and 
other Massachusetts men of distinction of that time, 
he passionately craved the opportunity of two or three 
years' residence and study in the " old home " as a 
means of development and an intellectual pleasure of the 
highest kind. 

In the early days of the Adams administration, a 
party of Englishmen of liberal views came to America to 
travel and study the republic. They were a picked set 
of promising young men of political aspirations; with- 
out titles then ; but in subsequent years three of them 
became known as Earl Derby, Lord Wharncliffe, and 
Lord Taunton ; and the fourth, Mr. John Evelyn Deni- 
son, afterwards attained that very honorable and pecu- 
liar distinction in English political life, the Speakership 
of the House of Commons. The Speaker has usually 
been a typical instance of the English ruling class; a 
gentleman of means and scholarly tastes, a sportsman 
and game preserver, a man of the world and fashion, 
and with a certain moderation and solidity of opinion. 
They brought letters of introduction. Several of them 

207 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

had a letter to Webster; and in this letter it is men- 
tioned as a sign of " the improving liberality of the 
times " that these young gentlemen leaving Europe and 
the grand tour behind them should go to pay their com- 
pliments to the United States. The letter was no doubt 
correct in stating that it was the first experiment of 
the kind ; and great things were expected of the tourists 
" for whom Corregio and Michael Angelo, Versailles 
and the Coliseum have such feeble attractions in com- 
parison with the wonders of New England and Wash- 
ington." ^ 

The young travellers saw all the notable places and 
persons in America, diligently studied our politics and 
ways of life, were much entertained, and a great deal 
in the company of Webster and Judge Story, with whom 
Mr. Denison kept up the friendship by correspondence 
for many years. 

They were all of value to Webster because they 
gave his insatiable mind a chance to learn many things 
about English politics he could hardly obtain in any 
other way. These young liberals had taken up the idea, 
much developed since their day, of amicable settlement 
of all difficulties between America and England, oblivion 
for all past differences, more cordial relations and a 
fuller appreciation of the necessity for co-operation 
and sympathy among all the members of the great Eng- 
Hsh speaking race. Webster, like other New Eng- 
landers, was in full accord with these opinions and 
indeed an ardent advocate of them. 

There was not then the easy means of reaching 
England in a voyage of seven or eight days ; nor were 
there any of the books or full newspaper reports which 
we now have for learning about English doings from 
day to day. We see the changed conditions very plainly 
when we find Webster relying upon Mr. Denison for a 
large part of the rest of his life to send him every year 
from England pamphlets, books, an d information with 

* Webster, Works, vol. xvi, p. iii. 

208 



BUNKER HILL ADDRESS 

which no one now would think of troubling a private 
person. But it was then still the age when men of 
education relied upon private correspondence for a large 
part of their information. 

In 1825 there came an opportunity to Webster to 
deliver the address on the anniversary of the Battle 
of Bunker Hill. He had now learned to value these 
occasional addresses, more than his speeches in Con- 
gress, as a means of increasing his reputation as an 
orator. He always took the most exhaustive pains and 
care; possibly too much; for they smell of the lamp 
more than his famous speeches in debate. They were 
after all artificial occasions and not like a hot reply 
to Hayne or Calhoun in the Senate. 

It was June ; trout fishing season ; he was free from 
Congress and the Supreme Court; and a large part of 
the oration, especially the famous part addressed to the 
veterans of the Revolution, was composed while wading 
with his rod in Mashpee Brook, a stream which flows 
into the ocean in his favorite region, the southeastern 
coast of Massachusetts. He would let his line run 
carelessly down the stream, his son says, and then 
lost in his thoughts would advance one foot, extend his 
hand, and begin to speak, " venerable men, etc." 

He worked himself stale over the speech until it 
seemed to him like a very dull performance. " No tone 
in it," he said, all " dissolution and thaw." It was, how- 
ever, far better in diction and style than the Plymouth 
oration. It was more Websterian. There are perma- 
nent passages in it, passages that will probably always 
be read with interest and pleasure. The part where he 
turned towards the seats where the old veterans of the 
Revolution were sitting, and addressed them, is unde- 
niably fine. 

" Venerable men ! You have come down to us from a for- 
mer generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your 
lives that you might behold this joyous day. You are now 
where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your 
14 209 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder in the strife 
for your country. Behold how altered ! The same heavens 
are indeed over your heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet ; 
but all else how changed ! You hear now no roar of hostile 
cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising 
from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the 
dead and the dying ; the impetuous charge ; the steady suc- 
cessful repulse ; the loud call to repeated assault ; the sum- 
moning of all that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thousand 
bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever 
of terror there may be in war and death ; — all these you have 
witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace." 

This was among- the first passages of Webster's 
eloquence to be widely quoted and regarded as of per- 
manent value. It fulfils the definition he afterwards 
gave that eloquence resides in the occasion. Most of 
the Bunker Hill oration is taken up with a summary 
of the progress of the world ; the prospect of ever- 
lasting peace now that the Napoleonic wars were 
over; the advance of Republican ideas of government; 
the wonderful advances of science and the mechanic 
arts ; " the unexampled and almost incredible use of 
machinery," as it seemed to him and the people of that 
time. But to us, the progress then attained seems like 
nothing, and these portions of the oration have lost all 
the novelty which gave them vogue. It was rather a 
new thing to summarize progress in such a complete 
and enthusiastic way. Since then it has been done a 
thousand times ; and when one of the summaries is 
a few years old it is obsolete. 

The Bunker Hill oration was a great event in its 
day. So far as adding to his reputation was concerned 
Webster could hardly have asked more from it. Every 
one read it in America ; it was admired in England ; and 
translated into French and other languages on the conti- 
nent of Europe. But so hard had Webster wrought oti 
it and so particular had he become, that as soon as it 
was delivered he began to worry himself with the 
thought that he had not used enough Anglo-Saxon 
words. On the morning after its deliver}^ he handed 

210 



NIAGARA 

it to one of the students in his office in Boston, saying, 
" There, Tom, please to take that discourse and weed 
out the Latin words." 

In the early summer of 1825 Mr. and Mrs. Webster 
with Judge Story and his wife and some friends made 
a journey to see Niagara Falls. Such an excursion on 
a return ticket is now often taken by clerks or even 
laboring men, and nothing much thought of it. It 
hardly seems serious enough to record in a biography 
except that in those days it was something of an event 
in a person's life, almost equal to a trip to Africa in 
our time. Niagara was then one of the great wonders 
of the world, and had not been outshone by the Yellow- 
stone Park, the Yoseniite, or the glaciers of Alaska. 
The Websters and Storys spent part of June and nearly 
all of July on the expedition, travelling in coaches from 
Boston and on the slower passenger boats of the Erie 
Canal across New York. Nothing that has since been 
written of that region equals in freshness and interest 
the letters which Webster and the Judge wrote home 
to their friends and relatives. It shov/s how important 
are first impressions and early descriptions of even 
great objects in nature before they became hackneyed. 

The Judge was, as usual, interested in everything, 
and wrote well about everything, giving rather more de- 
tails than Webster, and describing Trenton Falls and 
other forgotten wonders and beauties of that country 
with an enthusiasm which would no doubt bring a 
very supercilious smiile to the face of a modern globe- 
trotter. He was a thorough Massachusetts man of 
that time and carried with him the Massachusetts 
atmosphere; it was the time of the intellectual ascend- 
ency of Unitarianism, and the Judge was a strong 
Unitarian, seeking out the Unitarian preachers to be 
found on his journey. The wonderful physical vigor 
of Webster impressed him. " He has." he said, " a 
giant constitution and can bear every sort of fatigue." 

Most of Webster's letters were addressed to Mrs. 

21T 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Blake, the accomplished wife of his shooting companion 
in Boston. It was the duty and custom of the time that 
he and the Judge should use their best efforts to send 
home, to be passed about and read, accounts of distant 
and remarkable places ; for in no other way could such 
accounts be obtained. But for us all these places and a 
great many more have been described to death in news- 
papers, magazines, and books until a person who should 
undertake to describe Niagara in a letter in the manner 
of Webster or the Judge, would be put down as a bore 
or a mere schoolboy. But the magazines and news- 
papers have seldom improved on Webster's description 
of what was then considered the marvellous sight when 
you went in a little distance between the falling mass of 
water and the rock over which it was precipitated. 

" Water, vapor, foam, and the atmosphere are all mixed 
up in sublime confusion. By our side, down comes this world 
of green and white waters, and pours into the invisible abyss. 
A steady, unvarying, low toned roar thunders incessantly upon 
our ears ; as we look up, we think some sudden disaster has 
opened the seas, and that all their floods are coming down 
upon us at once ; but we soon recollect that what we see is 
not a sudden or violent exhibition, but the permanent and 
uniform character of the object which we contemplate. There 
the grand spectacle has stood for centuries, from the creation 
even, as far as we know, without change. From the beginning 
it has shaken, as it now does, the earth and the air; and its 
unvarying thunder existed before there were human ears to 
hear it." (Private Correspondence, vol. i, p. 390.) 

Webster had a long holiday that summer of 1825. 
He had had a severe winter in Congress and in the 
courts ; and after his return from the Niagara tour he 
and Mrs. Webster were at Sandwich, on Cape Cod, 
until well into the autumn. Five years more of this 
routine work in Congress and the courts now separated 
him from the great event of his life, the reply to Hayne, 
on which so much of his fame is supposed to rest. 
There were many minor things, and some important 
ones in those five 3^ears which should, perhaps, be de- 

212 



NIAGARA 

scribed. He had now an influence in Congress so com- 
manding, his abihty in debate and argument was so 
convincing, that sarcastic complaints of it can be found 
in the speeches of other members ; and in the next five 
years this influence steadily increased. 

Among his minor eft'orts was an attempt to satisfy 
the demand of the time for a reorganization of the 
United States Courts. The Supreme Court judges at 
that time, when not sitting as the court of appeal and 
last resort, held circuit courts in different parts of the 
country which was divided into districts for the pur- 
pose. The modern system of confining the Supreme 
Court judges to purely appellate functions and having 
a different set of judges for the circuit and district 
courts had not then grown up. It was regarded by 
conservative lawyers, like Webster, as very important, 
that the Supreme Court judges should vary their appel- 
late duties by conducting jury trials on the circuit, so 
that they could see " in practice the operation and 
effect of their own decisions, and have that inter- 
course with other judges, with the bar and with the 
community which had heretofore been found such a 
useful means of information." In the enormous in- 
crease of litigation in modern times this method has 
been abandoned ; and the judges of courts of last resort, 
State as well as National, now live secluded from the 
world in order to turn out the immense number of 
decisions and opinions required. 

It was also considered by many as vitally important 
that the personnel of the Supreme Court, consisting 
of Marshall, Story, and five others, should remain as it 
was, as long as possible. These seven judges had 
grown accustomed to acting together. They had har- 
monized for many years in their views of the great con- 
stitutional questions. They had decided these questions 
favorably to Federalism, Union, and the power of the 
National Government and unfavorably to disunion, sec- 
tionalism, and extreme State rights. They had added 

213 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to the dignity and reputation of the court ; they were 
admired and respected by the Bar; they wished to con- 
tinue in the old line; and they were averse to an increase 
of their numbers which might break up the very success- 
ful harmony of views on certain important questions. 

But increasing population and expansion in the west 
demanded more circuit courts ; and this could be accom- 
plished only by increase in the number of the Supreme 
Court judges or by confining them to purely appellate 
functions, both of which seemed undesirable. There 
were many of the Democratic party who were jealous of 
the Supreme Court's power to declare State laws un- 
constitutional and were inclined to favor an act of 
Congress restricting the court's power in this respect. 
If the question of reorganizing the court was raised at 
all, it was feared that these extreme State rights persons 
might accomplish their purpose. 

To Webster, as chairman of the judiciary committee, 
fell the delicate duty of taking through Congress some 
measure which would satisfy the needs of the time and 
not endanger conservative principles. He finally com- 
promised by adding three new judges, provided that 
six of the ten judges should be a quorum for the Su- 
preme Court. The bill passed the House, but failed in 
the Senate ; and the reorganization of the courts went 
over to a later period of history. The bill, however, 
had its value, no doubt, as showing a desire on the 
part of Congress to conciliate the Western States. It 
probably lessened their antipathy to the Supreme Court. 
The episode illustrates Webster's methods and opinions, 
his conservatism and his friendliness with the judges; 
'■' If the bill passes," he wrote to Judge Story, " well ; if 
not, we have made a fair offer, and the court will 
remain at seven some years longer." 

Another specimen of his work in Congress was his 
speech in support of President Adams's plan to send 
envoys to Panama to a congress of the South American 
provinces then in the midst of their struggles to free 

214 



EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON 

themselves from Spain. It was an innocent enough 
proposal; but it led to endless debate, and was made 
the occasion for organizing opposition to the adminis- 
tration. An attempt was made to fasten instructions 
on the envoys as to what they should discuss or consult 
upon with the respresentatives of other countries they 
would meet. This was regarded by Webster as an 
unconstitutional infringement of the prerogatives of 
the President. It was for the President to instruct 
the envoys; and Congress could not constitutionally 
interfere with his privilege. Webster enlarged, on this 
occasion, in a very interesting manner on the rela- 
tions of the departments of the government to one 
another. It was another experience and training in that 
constitutional reasoning in which he was becoming 
such an adept that he could argue many of these im- 
portant cjuestions without immediate preparation. 

After another laborious winter in Washington he 
again had an opportunity to deliver one of those formal 
orations or addresses. John Adams and Thomas Jef- 
ferson, of the Revolution, died on the same day, the 
4th of July, 1826, and within a few hours of each other. 
This curious coincidence, the great age of both of the 
men, and their illustrious services to the country, 
aroused an unusual public interest. Who but Webster, 
the orator of Plymouth and of Bunker Hill, would be 
equal to such an occasion ? He was asked by the mayor 
and officials of Boston to deliver an eulogy on the two 
great men, and the date fixed upon was the 26. of 
August, in Faneuil Hall. 

He worked hard, as usual, in preparation, so hard 
in this instance that he wore out all his faculty for 
judging of his own work. Mr. Ticknor, whom he con- 
sulted, found him much embarrassed and dissatisfied, 
walking up and down his room. But Ticknor assured 
him there was no cause for uneasiness. His emotional 
side was evidently much aroused, especially by his 
preparation of the speech which he put into the mouth 

215 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of John Adams as having been delivered in reply to 
some one in the Continental Congress whO' opposed the 
adoption of the Declaration of Independence. " I 
wrote that speech," he afterwards told President Fill- 
more, "one morning before breakfast, in my library, 
and when it was finished my paper was wet with my 
tears." 

This eulogy on Adams and Jefferson was almost the 
last of his addresses of this sort; and, except for one 
or two passages, does not now seem the best of these 
orations which added so much to his fame. But his 
appearance and manner are said to have been very 
impressive. He was in the prime of life, forty-four 
years old, most handsomely dressed, in the perfection 
of manly beauty and strength ; and his bearing, Ticknor 
says, was one of " absolute dignity and power." 

Webster's anxiety about the oration was natural. 
Except for the passage on eloquence, it does not now 
impress one as anything wonderful. The greater part 
of it consisted of mere biography, a statement of the 
public services of Adams and Jefferson ; very well done 
it is true; but nothing remarkable. The curious cir- 
cumstance of their death, their great age, and the 
natural pathos and poetry of such a situation, were 
eloquently commented on, and then came the often 
quoted passage on eloquence: 

" True eloquence does not consist in speech. It cannot 
be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but 
they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled 
in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the 
man, in the subject and in the occasion. Affected passion, 
intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to 
it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the 
outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth 
of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original native force." 

This, like the speech to the veterans in the Bunker 
Hill address, is one of the first of the " Webster quo- 
tations," the first of his utterances to pass into per- 

216 



EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON 

manent literature. Curiously enough he gave an 
illustration of his definition of eloquence at the end of 
his own oration when he put the supposed speech into 
the mouth of John Adams. This is the speech of 
Adams that we used to have in our school declamation 
books : " Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, 
I give my hand and my heart to this vote." 

It had an immense popularity at the time because, 
although nearly two generations had grown up since 
the Revolution, they had nothing to read about it; and 
the novelty of an actual debate on the great question at 
issue very naturally delighted them. For years after- 
wards Webster used to receive letters asking if John 
Adams really did deliver that speech. 

But the speech does not now impress us as very real. 
It is far-fetched. " Labor and learning toiled for it," 
but they could not compass it ; and it is the mere 
" pomp of declamation." His old colleague in the Dart- 
mouth College case, Mr. Joseph Hopkinson, of Phila- 
delphia, wrote him a very pertinent comment on it, to 
the effect that his argument against the Declaration 
was stronger than the one for it. This was in accord 
with the history of the event. The strength of human 
reasoning was with those who opposed the measure, 
though all elevated and noble feeling was in favor 
of it. 

In the autumn of 1826 Webster was again elected to 
Congress for the third time to represent Boston. His 
previous elections had been in the era of good feeling, 
when there were no strongly marked party lines. His 
first election from Boston in 1822 had been unopposed 
by the Democrats. In 1824 he was voted for and elected 
without any particular party contest. The vote for him 
was very large, almost unanimous, and most of the 
voters were presumably Democrats. In neither election 
had he been regularly nominated in anything like the 
modern way by any party. His name had merely been 
put forward by certain leading citizens. But now under 

217 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the administration of John Quincy Adams, parties were 
beginning to form again, and they seem to have divided 
on the question of supporting or not supporting the 
President's administration. Those Democrats who 
were favorable to tlie President had separated from 
their party, had formed a new party organization, and 
were calHng themselves Republicans, while the rest of 
the old Democratic party were afflicted with the craze 
for General Jackson and had already laid their plans 
for electing him to the Presidency. Webster had sup- 
ported the administration of Adams, and in this election 
in 1826 was regularly nominated, voted for, and elected 
by the new Republican party so-called, soon to become 
the Whig party. 

This election meant another laborious winter in Con- 
gress and the courts. In the Supreme Court, and in 
other courts of the country, Webster's practice was now 
very large. He had for some time represented many 
of the claims under the Florida Treaty of 1819, for 
indemnification of seizures by Spanish cruisers in 1788. 
His fees in these cases, his literary executor informs us, 
amounted to $70,000. He argued fifteen cases in the 
Supreme Court this winter, and his professional income 
from all sources would even in our own time be re- 
garded as considerable. Besides this he was the most 
conspicuously able man in Congress : he bore the burden 
of every important debate ; was the recognized defender 
of the administration ; kept himself better informed than 
any other member on a wider range of topics, political, 
historical, and literary ; and delivered speeches, whether 
on important or unimportant subjects, of such rare 
dignity and tone as to make the least of them, even at 
this late day, a pleasure to read and a fit subject for 
study. 



218 



IX 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE — DEATH OF HIS WIFE — TARIFF 

OF 1828 — REMARRIAGE PRESIDENT'S 

POWER OF REMOVAL 

That winter of 1826-27 was Webster's last service 
in the lower House of Congress. The failing health of 
Mr. Mills, one of the Senators from Massachusetts, 
made a vacancy to be filled in the Senate. Webster 
seemed inclined to remain where he was ; and among the 
letters from the leaders of the Republican party there 
were some arguments in favor of this view. He under- 
stood the business of the Lower House so thoroughly 
and was so powerful in debate that his removal might 
seriously weaken the administration party, which, 
though a majority in the Lower House, was none too 
strong. But in the Upper House it was still weal-cer 
and was in the minority; so that it v/as, perhaps, more 
important to strengthen the administration party in the 
Senate. In the Lower House conditions might take a 
favorable turn and young men of talents be developed. 
Governor Lincoln, of Massachusetts, urged this point 
upon Webster very strongly, and described the Senate as 
in every way his proper field of usefulness. 

Governor Lincoln himself could have had the elec- 
tion to the Senate if he bad wanted it, and Webster 
urged it on him. But he positively declined it, and the 
Massachusetts Legislature elected Webster in June, 
1827, his service to date back from the 4th of March 
of that year. This declination of Lincoln, as Senator 
Hoar has pointed out, was one of those curious inci- 
dents occasionally found in histor}-, and apparently 
leading to momentous consequences. If he had accepted 
and had been elected it seems as if the course of history 
might have been very much altered. The term of six 

21Q 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

years, from 1827 to 1833, for which Webster was now 
elected, exactly covers his great speeches on nullification, 
the greatest of his life, the reply to Hayne and the reply 
to Calhoun, of immeasurable influence on the American 
Union. Lincoln could certainly not have delivered those 
speeches ; and Webster could not have delivered them 
in the Lower House of Congress/ 

Unfortunately for Webster, when on his way to 
Washington in November to take his seat in the Senate 
and begii^ his new duties, he was stopped in New York 
by the serious illness of his wife, who accompanied 
him. Her trouble was a tumor of rather long stand- 
ing; but not much had been thought of it until lately. 
Distinguished physicians in New York, Dr. Post and 
Dr. Perkins, were consulted, and their opinion was not 
favorable. She remained in New York for nearly two 
months while hope and discouragement alternated ; and 
died on the 21st of January, 1828. At the funeral in 
Boston, Webster, taking two of his children by the 
hand, walked close to the hearse through the winter 
streets to the grave. He closed his Boston house and 
disposed of his children in the families of friends. His 
daughter Julia went to Mrs. Lee, a very dear friend 
of his wife. His son Fletcher was at school, and Ed- 
ward, as he expressed it, was to be turned for " the 
winter into Mrs. Hale's little flock." This done he 
returned to Washington and his usual duties in the 
Senate and the courts. 

Webster's marriage had been a very happy one; 
and long after the bloom and first impressions of 
youth had passed, he and his wife remained very con- 
genial companions. She sympathized completely in his 
pursuits and opinions, understood with more than usual 
feminine intelligence the ideas and subjects with which 
he dealt, and was intimate and friendly with his friends 
and their wives, the Storys, the Masons, and the Tick- 



^Mass. Historical Society, Second Series, vol. xv, pp. 230- 
238; Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 163, 164 

220 



DEATH OF HIS WIFE 

nors. Her loss was a severe blow to him, possibly 
more so than he realized. It has been suggested that 
certain regrettable traits, extravagance, debt, willingness 
to receive large presents of money from political ad- 
mirers, and perhaps overgenerous eating and drinking 
might not have developed themselves if she had lived. 
But this is a doubtful speculation ; or guess, for it is 
nothing more. 

He was very gloomy in Washington that winter and 
spring, anxious to have his old friends visit him ; and 
was very much gratified when Mr. Ticknor and Pres- 
cott, the historian, came to stay with him, 

" I received yours of the 13th this morning, and never 
executed commission with more alacrity and pleasure than 
this of looking up rooms for you and Mr. Prescott. It delights 
me to hear that you are coming, and I shall certainly keep you 
for a fortnight. 

" The rooms are engaged. They are not strictly in the 
house I live in, but in the same block and quite proximate. 
My landlady has engaged them, and I am to have the pleasure 
of your company at my table. When you arrive at this far- 
famed metropolis, please direct the coachman to set you down 
at Mrs. Mclntyre's, Pennsylvania Avenue, nearly opposite 
Gadsby's National Hotel, a little this side, precisely by the side 
of a pump, at a large wooden platform which supplies the 
place of a stepping stone. Inquire for Mr. Webster. If he is 
out, ask for Charles — and the rest will follow in regular 
sequence. I shall see that there is dinner for you at two 
o'clock on Sunday; and if that day should not bring you, at 
four o'clock on Monday." 

In the spring following his wife's death Webster 
made that speech on the new tariff law of 1828, which 
has so often been referred to in discussions on the 
policy of protection. He had seen the birth of our 
policy of protection soon after he first entered Congress 
in the tariff law of 181 6. He had made a speech against 
the second tariff act of 1824, and now he spoke on this 
third act in 1828, which carried still further the prin- 
ciple of protection, increasing duties and putting new 
ones on articles that had never before been taxed. 

221 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Like all tariff bills, it was a tiresome list of hun- 
dreds of small articles, many of them strange commer- 
cial names, that the ordinary person has seldom heard 
of. A glaiice at the two laws of 1824 and 1828 shows, 
for example, that macaroni, gloves and lute strings are 
taxed for the first time in 1828, and so it goes on through 
apparently trifling things up to iron, wool, hemp, mo- 
lasses, cotton, and the important products. Innumer- 
able interests had got together and sought protection 
for their occupations under this new bill. Nearly all 
manufactured articles were taxed and their price appa- 
rently increased to the consumer. This excited the 
South, which believed that northern manufacturers were 
enriching themselves at her expense; and they called 
the new act the " bill of abominations." 

They blamed New England in particular, as the 
cause of all this evil ; and to punish her and compel 
her to vote against the bill special taxes injurious to 
her were put in the bill by its opponents. The tax 
on molasses was the most notorious of these ; for New 
England used a great deal of it and it was the basis of 
a large part of her carrying trade to the West Indies. 
Southerners who were opposed to the bill and ready 
to break up the union because it was finally passed, 
nevertheless voted for these punishments. 

But even without these " doses of medicine," as they 
were called, the bill was very strongly against New 
England because it increased the taxes on iron, hemp, 
and duck. The increase of these three taxes alone took 
hundreds of thousands of dollars from the pockets 
of New England ship-owners, because it made ships 
more expensive than ever to build, repair and own in 
America. The producers of iron, hemp and duck were 
protected at the expense of the owners of ships. So 
very objectionable were these "abominations" that 
Webster's colleague in the Senate, Mr. Silsbee, and Mr. 
Gorham, the Boston representative in the Lower House, 
voted against the bill. 

222 



TARIFF OF 1828 

Webster took the position of making a speech in 
which he deplored all the " abominations " as much as 
anybody ; in fact, made what was in some respects a 
rather free trade speech ; but declared himself in favor 
of the bill because it favored the woollen manufacturing 
interests in New England which had grown up under 
the protection and encouragement given to them in 
the act of 1824. 

A large amount of capital had been invested and 
numerous people employed in this industry and, by 
changes in the English duties on wool and methods of 
importing it since 1824, a very large part of the pro- 
tection of our tariff law of that year had been neutral- 
ized. The wool manufacturers appealed to Congress 
to save their invested capital. It had been invested, 
they said, in good faith under the act of 1S24, and in 
reliance on that act. Congress, in short, had led them 
into the business and must now give them further 
protection against the new condition. The woollen 
industry had accordingly been included in the bill in 
the manner desired by the manufacturers. 

For the sake of this capital and these people, Web- 
ster said the tariff bill with all its abominations must 
be accepted. He was deeply annoyed and worried at 
reaching this conclusion and came to it with great 
reluctance. But there was no other way, as it seemed 
to him, to save the woollen industry and its capital 
which, having been created by Congress, could not in 
decency be abandoned by Congress. He declaimed 
savagely against the iniquity and trickery of a lumping- 
tariff' bill all at one time, and which must be voted for 
as a whole. But wdiat could he do? Let all this great 
woollen industry perish? Or save it by accepting the 
bill which protected it? 

He never heard the end of this advocacy of a special 
interest and it is brought up against his reputation to 
this day. Fie has been called a mere attorney in the 
Senate for a special interest. But were not his col- 

223 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

league Silsbee, and Gorham in the Lower House, as 
much attorneys for a special interest when they opposed 
the bill because it injured New England ship-owners? 
Is not a protective tariff essentially a series or set of 
special interests? and would not anyone who advocated 
protection for any commodity be an attorney for a 
special interest? In the case of such a lumping, drag- 
net sort of bill, it was a nicely balanced question whether 
you would try to save shipping or wool. Shipping was 
still holding its own in spite of adverse taxes, had long 
held its own, and might be able to take care of itself. 
In fact, it took care of itself in spite of adverse duties 
down to the time of the Civil War. The wool industry 
was new and weak, dependent on the tariff system, 
already injured for want of more protection. The tariff 
system was going on, and should not New England 
obtain a portion of its benefits in return for bearing so 
many of its burdens? So Webster accepted the whole 
bill for the sake of its protection of wool.^ 

The passage of this tariff act of 1828 led to great 
events. In one sense it led to the Civil War of 1861, 
because it was the beginning of the secession movement 
in the South, It furnished the excuse for building up 
a theory of nullification and secession, really intended 
to protect slavery, as much as to protect the South from 
high tariff legislation. In South Carolina particularly, 
the new tariff was attacked with the utmost violence 
and not without exaggeration of its effects. The fol- 
lowing year the South Carolina Legislature sent to 
Congress a formal written protest arguing against the 
law as mere robbery of the agricultural South, contrary 
to all the principles of free government, compelling her 
to buy nearly all the manufactured necessaries of life 
at an increased price to enrich the North. Although 
South Carolina representatives in Congress had voted 
for the protective tariff of 1816, and without finding it 

''See besides his speech a letter, Works, National Edition, 

vol. xvi, p. 147. 

224 



TARIFF OF 1828 

unconstitutional, they now discovered that a power to 
protect domestic manufactures by import duties could 
not be inferred from the power to regulate commerce 
and was not " necessary and proper " for carrying into 
effect the commerce regulation clause of the Consti- 
tution.^ 

That summer of 1828 Webster returned to Boston 
much depressed by his recent affliction, weary of poli- 
tics and law, and very anxious to be with his children 
and have some semblance of a home again. He got 
the children with him in his Boston house, leaving 
Julia, however, most of the time with Mrs. Lee. He 
could not altogether escape some legal engagements, 
and at a complimentary dinner given to him in Faneuil 
Hall on the 5th of June he was obliged to deliver a set 
speech reviewing the political situation and defending 
his vote on the tariff and internal improvements. 

It was the year of a presidential election. The ad- 
ministration of John Quincy Adams was closing, an 
administration notable for the advance of internal im- 
provements and the protective tariff. Internal improve- 
ments, the building of roads and canals, and the deep- 
ening of rivers and harbors all over the Union at the 
expense of the Federal Government instead of by the 
States, was not a new idea. But such improvements had 
recently been very much demanded for developing the 
interior of the country because we were no longer the 
great neutral trader and ship-owner since the close of 
the Napoleonic wars had set the European nations free 
to resume their ocean commerce. The same condition 
developed the principle of protection to domestic indus- 
tries, because the increasing population could not longer 
satisfy itself with agriculture and navigation and de- 
manded to be let into manufacturing by the shortest 

^ Gales and Seaton, Congressional Debates, vol. v, 828-29. 
p. 52. See generally for the tariff question the debates of 1828 ; 
and for all similar questions the debates are an excellent source 
pf information. 

15 225 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

method. The two ideas, the protective tariff and inter- 
nal improvements, received the name of the American 
System, that is the system for the pecuHar and special 
interests of America, though sometimes the name has 
been appHed to the protective tarifif alone. Henry Clay 
was the great expounder of the system, and its advocacy 
the chief mission of his life. 

Internal improvements and the protective tariff were 
advocated and carried out so strenuously during the 
Adams administration that political parties formed 
again and the era of good feeling was completely 
broken up. The followers of Adams, former Federal- 
ists and like-minded Democrats, believed that both pro- 
tection and internal improvements were constitutional 
under that clause which gives Congress the power to 
regulate commerce. The Jacksonian Democrats and 
the southern Democrats, though many of them had once 
been prominent in favoring both protection and internal 
improvements, now began to discover that the power to 
regulate commerce was not broad enough to include 
the American System. 

Webster's previous political career of nearly twenty 
years had been in a large degree free from party heat 
and even from partisanship. He had had a rare oppor- 
tunity, of which he had taken full advantage, to build 
up for himself a broad reputation of statesmanship. 
His ideas, his arguments, and his eloquence had won the 
confidence of nearly all classes. He had for some years 
been in a very enviable position with his legal practice 
in the highest courts and the most important cases, his 
happy family life, his out-of-door sports and amusement 
from Tune to November on Cape Cod, his liberal, large- 
minded interests of every sort, and his acquaintance 
and correspondence with distinguished foreigners. But 
now he was in favor of the re-election of Mr. Adams, 
against whom the main body of the Democratic party 
had united with new ideas of making the offices of 
government a fund for the reward of partisan service. 

226 



TARIFF OF 1828 

Webster frankl}^ opposed this new heresy as a source 
of corruption and demoralization which might bring 
the American experiment of Republican government to 
an early end. He opposed General Jacl<son as its repre- 
sentative and as a man without any real experience or 
capacity in statecraft, " wholly unfit for the place to 
which he aspires," but whose military exploits had capti- 
vated the imagination of the people. 

Webster thus became, from force of circumstances, 
a more strictly party man. The attacks upon him began 
at this period, and among them was the accusation, 
already discussed, that at the time of the embargo and 
the War of 1812 he had been one of the Federalists who 
had designed to separate New England from the Union 
and unite her to the British provinces. 

Adams was supported very generally in New 
England for the sake of his ability and family his- 
tory and in spite of his coldness and vote for the 
embargo law. But he was opposed by certain Federalists 
who separated themselves from their party, joined the 
Jackson Democrats, and established in Boston a news- 
paper called the Jackson Republican. This paper, on 
the 29th of October, 1828, published a statement, written 
by Mr. Theodore Lyman, that Mr. Adams had disclosed 
to Jefferson that Daniel Webster and some other prom- 
inent Federalists had in the times before the War of 
1812 been " engaged in a plot to dissolve the Union 
and reannex New England to Great Britain," " Why, 
then," it was asked, had Adams " held to his bosom as a 
political counsellor Daniel Webster, a man whom he 
called in his midnight denunciation a traitor in 1808?" 

Webster was greatly incensed at this, and acting 
perhaps in conjunction with other Federalists had Mr. 
Lyman indicted and arrested for a criminal libel. Ly- 
man was a man of wealth, good family, social and politi- 
cal prominence, was at times mayor of Boston, member 
of the Legislature, an officer in the militia, and at the 
'isk of his life rescued the abolitionist, William Lloyd 

227 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Garrison, from an infuriated mob in 1835. Webster 
and Lyman had been friends, members of the same 
intimate social circle in Boston, and the trial was quite 
a scandal in its day. It would hardly be mentioned 
here except that Webster's biographers have been 
charged with concealing it for the sake of relieving him 
of the odium of being accused of plotting to destroy the 
Union. 

As a matter of fact Lyman was mistaken in saying 
that Adams had made this charge against Webster; he 
had simply made it generally of Federalists, as was often 
done, and Lyman in the heat of politics had named 
Webster because he was a Federalist. Of course Ly- 
man's counsel, besides the defence of inadvertence, haste, 
and no intention to injure Webster, said that it could 
not be a libel to charge a person with a plot to dissolve 
the Union because "every State has a right to secede 
from the Union without committing treason." This 
has been sometimes thought particularly significant ; but 
is hardly any m.ore so than the rest of the disunion talk 
that had been heard from time to time ever since the 1 
foundation of the National Government, and was soon 
to be heard in full flood in the debate with Hayne. 
Nothing much came of the trial because the jury dis- 
agreed, and some years afterwards Webster and Lyman 
made up and their families exchanged visits.* 

Disunion was in this year, 1828, beginning to be a 
serious subject of discussion. It seemed treason to 
most Americans and a natural right to others. It was 
not the New Englanders who were now raising it, but 
the South Carolinians who objected to the recent tariff 
as benefiting New England at the expense of the South. 
In his message to Congress in that autumn of 182S, 
President Adam.s had strongly expressed his disappro- 
bation of all sentiments of disunion. 

John Quincy Adams, able, honest, and in politics 

* Josiah H. Benton, Jr., " A Notable Libel Case," Boston, 
1894; Curtis, Life of Webster, vol. ii, p. 33i- 

228 



TARIFF OF 1828 

from his youth, was, however, a self-centred, cold man, 
inspiring- great respect, but little enthusiasm. In the 
election he received all the electoral votes of New Eng- 
land, but in the South, where the rage against the new 
tariff was extreme, the whole electoral vote was cast 
against him. General Jackson was elected with Calhoun 
as Vice-President, and Jackson immediately inaugurated 
great changes in the methods of American politics. In 
Washington that spring of 1829, Webster was much 
disgusted, but half amused and determined to take things 
calmdy. He watched the changes taking place and the 
horde of ofifice-seekers pouring into the capital. " A 
great multitude," he writes, " too many to be fed without 
a miracle, are already in the city, hungry for office." 
And the President of the new ideas, a forceful, heroic 
man, no doubt, though of narrow intellect, complacently 
chewed and spit tobacco as he received his audiences 
and advisers. It was certainly a rude shock to the old 
feelings of dignity and culture, which had come down 
through the old Federalists — Washington, Madison, and 
the Adamses — from colonial times. 

From a letter to his brother Ezekiel that spring we 
are surprised to learn that Webster, weary of politics and 
life in Washington, had determined in the event of a 
certain contingency to resign from the Senate, abandon 
his practice in the Supreme Court, and retire to the 
practice of law in Boston. 

" If no change takes place in my own condition, of which 
I have not the slightest expectation, and if you are not elected, 
I shall not return. This, inter nos, but my mind is settled. 
Under present circumstances, public and domestic, it is dis- 
agreeable being here, and to me there is no novelty to make 
compensation. It will be better for me and my children that 
I should be with them. If I do not come in a public I shall 
not in a professional character. I can leave the court now as 
well as ever, and can earn my bread as well at home as here." 
(Private Correspondence, vol. i, p. 474.) 

He had, it seems, turned over his children to the care 
of his brother's wife. If the brother were elected to 

229 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Congress from New Hampshire and came to live in 
Washington, that would make a home there for Webster 
and the children. The other contingency he mentions 
as a change in his own condition possibly refers to his 
remarrying. His solitary condition in Washington, liv- 
ing in apartments without any of the family life he had 
so long been accustomed to, had become intolerable. 
He had the society of Judge Story in the same house, 
many friends and admirers, and plenty to do ; but it was 
not a sufficient substitute for his old life. 

Of the contingencies on which his retirement de- 
pended, one was quickly disposed of. His brother was 
not elected to Congress, and while addressing a jury 
in the court room at Concord, New Hampshire, fell dead 
of heart disease. Webster was now more than ever 
inclined to retire. He spent part of that summer of 
1828 in looking after the affairs of his deceased brother. 
The old family farm in New Hampshire now became 
his. He was attached to it and all its surroundings 
by strong sentiments ; he kept the farm going for the 
rest of his life under a favorite overseer, John Taylor; 
and in spite of the more varied and superior attractions 
of Marshfield he often visited this country place number 
two to enjoy the sight of his cattle, the invigorating 
climate, and the beautiful interval land along the river 
backed by the distant mountains. 

There seemed little left to draw him back to Wash- 
ington. But in the autumn of that year 1829, going 
to New York on professional business, he made the 
acquaintance of Miss Caroline Le Roy, and was mar- 
ried to her in December. They had no children. 
She was no doubt correctly described by her hus- 
band as " amiable and affectionate, prudent and agree- 
able." Quite a number of her letters are printed 
in Mr. Van Tyne's collection. She had had a great 
deal more experience than the first wife of social 
and fashionable life and probably was more apprecia- 
tive of the position given her by her husband's fame 

230 




Courtesy uf the S. S. McClure Company 

MRS. CAROLINE LE ROY WEBSTER 



REMARRIAGE 

and popularity. Some of her letters in the National 
Edition of his works indicate a rather bright mind, 
capable of expressing itself with point and even wit. 
It is hard to think of him choosing any other sort of 
woman for a wife. But her letters have not the serious- 
ness and charm of those of the first home-loving wife, 
occupied with the children and with only a passing 
interest in social and fashionable affairs. 

Now that he was married again there was less reason 
for Webster's retirement from politics, and he went to 
Washington to spend what proved to be the most event- 
ful winter of his life. We naturally expect to find him 
a decided opponent of the Jackson administration. He 
certainly detested the Jacksonian principle, that to the 
victors belong the spoils, that every new administration 
must make a clean sweep of all the subordinate officers 
for the sake of rewarding followers and dependents. 
He felt the evils of it in Washington as he watched 
Jackson make two thousand removals from Federal 
offices in two years, and he foresaw the injury and 
demoralization the system would work in the future. 
He had nothing but contempt for the argument that 
unless the offices were held out as rewards ordinary 
men would lose interest in political contests and would 
not labor for the success of even meritorious political 
opinions. He knew the contrary to be the fact in the 
forty odd years of his life. He regretted that the offices 
of the government should be made a corruption fund 
to influence votes and the officeholders corrupt political 
workers in order to retain their positions. He saw no 
good in a system which tended to make public patronage 
more important than political principle in the eyes of the 
ordinary man. 

But when the attempt was made to stop Jackson's 
wholesale removals, — on the ground that, as the Presi- 
dent's appointments to office must be confirmed by the 
Senate, he had no right to remove from office without 
the same sort of concurrence of the Upper House, — 

231 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Webster frankly admitted that the clause of the Con- 
stitution could not be stretched so far. The Constitu- 
tion provided that the approval of the Senate was 
necessary to an appointment to office, but was silent 
about removals. The question thus raised had not in- 
frequently been discussed, and the argument was now 
made by the opponents of Jackson, that the power to 
confirm an appointment necessarily included the power 
to determine the length of the appointment, that as the 
Constitution had required the confirmation of the Senate 
for appointments, it must have intended the same con- 
fimiation for removals, and that the President could not 
alone terminate an appointment. This had been the 
opinion of Chancellor Kent. But the opinion of Madi- 
son had been contrary and so had the practice of the 
government for half a century. Webster considered 
the argument against Jackson too inferential and arti- 
ficial to be maintained in the face of such long acquies- 
cence and practice ; and he accordingly would take no 
part in denying Jackson's constitutional power of 
removal. 



232 



X 

THE GREAT DEBATE AND THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

That curious episode in the history of the United 
States Senate, the Great Debate, lasted, with interv'als 
for other business, for three months, from the ist of 
January until the 2d of April, and again for a few 
days in May of the year 1830. It arose on a resolution 
of inquiry offered by Senator Foot, of Connecticut. 

" That the Committee on Public Lands be instructed to 
inquire into the expediency of limiting for a certain period the 
sales of the public lands to such lands only as have hereto- 
fore been offered for sale and are subject to entry at the 
minimum price ($1.25 per acre). And also whether the office 
of Surveyor General may not be abolished without detriment 
to the public interest." 

Resolutions of inquiry were usually passed by the 
Senate without debate as a matter of course. But this 
resolution sjiddenly assumed the importance of a great 
measure of public policy concealed in the disguise of 
inquiry, and was debated longer and more intensely 
than formal bills that were intended to become laws. 

It has been usual, especially in biographies of Web- 
ster, to say that the resolution was an innocent inquiry 
which had nothing to do with nullification, secession, 
and other wonderful topics which were lugged in in a 
very irregular way under its heading. But if we dis- 
pose of it in this brief manner, we miss the real situation 
of the time and the actual position and conduct of Web- 
ster. Under the circumstances of the times tlie resolu- 
tion was a fire-brand which lit up the passions and 
politics of nearly two generations. It was not an unim- 
portant subject. It was one of the largest subjects 
before the country. The hundreds of millions of acres 
of wild lands in the Mississippi Valley and the best 

233 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

method of disposing of them was by nO' means a small 
subject. Whether they should pass into the hands of 
settlers who would cultivate them or into the hands of 
speculators who would merely hold them for a rise in 
price; whether their settlement should be encouraged, 
even if it drained off population and weakened the 
Eastern States ; whether they should be given away 
for nothing in order to encourage settlement, or whether 
they should be sold for a price ; whether they should 
be given to the individual States ; or, if sold, what should 
be done with the proceeds, were momentous questions, 
questions which concerned the future development and 
greatness of the Union and the character of its popula- 
tion. Such questions had been frequently before Con- 
gress. Such questions included the great subject of 
internal improvements, which was connected with the 
public lands because the people of the West looked to 
Congress for such improvements of their waterways and 
highways as would help in developing their land. The 
protective tariff was part of the public lands question, 
because manufacturing industries in the East were sup- 
posed to keep people from emigrating to the West. The 
question of slavery was connected with the public lands 
because there was a serious difference of opinion 
whether the new territories in the West should be slave 
or free. 

The public lands had been a problem even in colonial 
times ; but a comparatively easy one, because, with the 
exception of the lands sold by proprietary provinces like 
Pennsylvania, the policy of the British Government had 
been to give the land away quite liberally for the sake 
of encouraging settlement. This was also the policy 
of other European countries that had colonies and de- 
pendencies. But when the United States was formed 
under the Constitution the States that had acquired 
wild lands in the West under their old charters which 
extended from sea to sea, gave these lands to the Gen- 
eral Government to be sold and the proceeds retained 

234 



THE GREAT DEBATE 

as a general fund for the benefit of all the States. These 
lands had, accordingly, been regarded as a trust for the 
benefit of the whole country ; a system for their survey 
and sale had been adopted ; and about four hundred acts 
of Congress had been passed to encourage their sale and 
settlement. Indeed, fully half the business before Con- 
gress had heretofore been made up of land bills. 

The system adopted had been to- offer the lands at 
public sale to the highest bidder ; and if not bought they 
could be purchased at private sale by anybody for $2 
per acre, reduced to $1.25 in 1820. This was a good 
system in its way ; though perhaps not equal to the pre- 
emption and homestead system which we have known in 
our time, and which began in 1862. We had to develop 
a land system by years of experience and trial just as 
the sub-treasury plan and the system of national banks 
finally superseded the crudeness of the Bank of the 
United States and the pet bank scheme of Jackson's 
time. 

Whatever may have been the defects of the old land 
system, the wonderfully flourishing comimunity of Ohio 
had grown up under it ; and Kentucky, Tennessee, Mis- 
souri, Indiana and Illinois were coming on with such 
strides that the West was spoken of as the little giant. 
It had already, by combining with the Northeast, decided 
the Presidential election of John Ouincy Adams, and 
now, by combining with the South, it had elevated to the 
Presidency one of its own men, the redoubtable General 
Jackson. 

The people of the old Northeastern States thought 
that the West was quite successful. But some of the 
westerners themselves, especially Senator Kane and 
Senator Benton, were inclined to think that some im- 
provements could be made in the land laws. The lands, 
for example, might be given for nothing to poor but 
industrious settlers, who would at once go to cultivating 
them. A man who had gone out on wild vacant public 
land and begun to cultivate a patch of it, " squatted " on 

235 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

it as the slang phrase was, should be given a pre-emption 
or first right to buy that land from the government at 
the minimum price instead of being treated as a tres- 
passer and a criminal. Refuse lands which had long 
remained unsold at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre 
should have the price annually reduced 25 cents per 
acre, until the price fell to 25 cents. 

Some of these ideas had been put in the form of bills 
and offered in Congress at various times for some years ; 
and some thirty years afterwards the right of pre- 
emption was allowed the squatters under the modern 
homestead system. Two such measures were now be- 
fore the Senate. One was a pre-emption bill to allow 
squatters the first right to buy. Thousands of these 
squatters were now, it was said, occupying public lands 
far beyond any surveys ; they were meritorious, hardy 
pioneers of civilization who risked themselves among 
the Indians, and should be assisted to obtain the homes 
for which they had fought. But some said that a pre- 
emption law would merely encourage intruders and 
trespassers to enter all the best lands and obtain them 
at the minimum price ; and that it was inadvisable to 
encourage squatters to go out beyond the surveys, be- 
cause they intruded on Indian land, caused war and 
massacre of innocent women and children, and expense 
to the government. 

Another land measure before the Senate was what 
was called a graduation bill, introduced by Benton, to 
reduce annually the price of the refuse inferior lands 
that could not be sold at $1.25 per acre. To Kane and 
Benton the Foot resolution seemed to have been intro- 
duced for the purpose of anticipating and forestalling 
these measures of pre-emption and graduation ; and 
Benton said that a New England newspaper contained 
a letter giving that as the purpose of the Foot reso- 
lution. 

Since the year 1803, the date of the purchase of the 
great Louisiana territory which included most of the 
region west of the Mississippi, the public land question 

236 



THE GREAT DEBATE 

had loomed into still vaster proportions. That enor- 
mous region was as yet hardly peopled at all; but its 
possibilities inflamed every imagination. Should it be 
slave or free, for example ? Would the protective tariff 
benefit or injure it? Should the government extend 
to it the doctrine of internal improvements ? As it was 
purchased by the common funds, must it not be held like 
the rest of the public land for the common benefit of all 
the States? 

Senator Benton was quite fanatical in his belief that 
New England and the Middle States were jealous of 
the West and inclined to check its growth to prevent 
their own population from migrating westward; and, 
although this is derided as an absurdity in biographies 
of Webster and even in histories, yet there is no doubt 
that the people of the Northeast felt uneasy about the 
loss of their population and talked and complained 
about it. Benton was very bitter in denouncing this 
New England feeling, and in going all lengths to 
exaggerate it and show that it had almost ruined the 
West and would in the end deliver up large portions 
of it to the dominion of wild beasts. As proof of the 
existence of the feeling, he quoted with great delight a 
letter written in 1813 by John Quincy Adams and pub- 
lished in the Boston Sentinel of April 18, 1827: 

" I am not displeased to hear that Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, 
Louisiana are rapidly peopHng with Yankees. I consider them 
as an excellent race of people, and as far as I am able to judge, 
I believe that their moral and political character, far from 
degenerating, improves by emigration. I have always felt, on 
that account, a sort of predilection for those rising western 
States ; and have seen with no small astonishment the prejudices 
harbored against them. . . . 

" If New England loses her influence in the councils of 
the Union, it will not be owing to any dissemination of her 
population, occasioned by these emigrations ; it will be from 
the partial, sectarian, or as Hamilton called it, clannish spirit, 
which makes so many of her political leaders jealous and 
envious of the West and South." 

Such a letter coming from a New Englander was a 
valuable piece of evidence : and further instances of 

237 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

hostility were accumulated by Benton with an animosity 
and a stirring up of sectional feeling that probably 
injured rather than helped the land measures of the 
West. But he was arousing this hostility, apparently, 
for the purpose of breaking up any political alliance or 
coalition between the Northeast and the West. His 
great object was to show that the South had always 
been friendly to the West and to ally the West with the 
South. 

New England, he said, at the time of the Revolution, 
in order to obtain the assistance of Spain against Eng- 
land, had been willing to abandon the right to the free 
navigation of the Mississippi River, if the alliance of 
Spain could be obtained in no other way. This was 
rather far-fetched, as an instance of hostility, because 
New England was trying to make the best bargain 
possible in order to win independence from England at 
a time when the patriot cause had sunk very low and was 
believed by some to be hopeless. New England was 
willing to surrender the navigation for a period of 
twenty-five years for a valuable consideration ; and 
Spain by assenting to such an arrangement and holding 
by our permission would be acknowledging our ultimate 
right. In fact, northern Senators completely headed ofif 
this argument of Benton's by showing that the South 
had in this respect been still more hostile than New 
England towards the West; for when suffering from 
British invasion and conquest the South had been will- 
ing to surrender the entire right to the Mississippi for 
the sake of Spain's assistance. But the whole notion 
was absurd; for neither New England nor the South 
had had in mind any real desire to injure the West. 

Another New England offence was that she had 
introduced the regulation which required the old town- 
ships of public land to be sold out completely before 
the subsequent ones could be offered for sale. But 
this was intended to benefit the West; have its settle- 
ment advance solidly, and prevent the settlers straggling 

338 



THE GREAT DEBATE 

too far out among the hostile Indians. It was an old 
poHcy adopted in colonial times, had been found to 
work well in New England and in Ohio ; and, as Senator 
Sprague showed, had originated in the South rather 
than in New England, and was advocated by Wash- 
ington. 

New England, it was said, had also introduced the 
regulation of not selling less than 640 acres together. 
This was a small matter to make such a fuss over ; 
and the minimum number of acres was afterwards 
reduced. But New England's crimes continued. She 
had voted against reducing the price of land from one 
dollar to sixty-two and two-thirds cents per acre ; and 
she had opposed detaching troops in 1786 to the pro- 
tection of the western settlers in Kentucky. In the 
vote on sending troops in 1786 it seems, however, that 
Massachusetts alone had voted against sending them. 
Connecticut was absent and Rhode Island, New Hamp- 
shire and the Middle States had voted to send the 
troops. It was a serious matter sending troops to Ken- 
tucky immediately after the Revolution ; and in all the 
voting on the question Senator Sprague showed that one 
section of the country was not any more against it 
than another ; and as a mater of fact, the troops were 
voted in the end. 

Benton scraped and raked everywhere through the 
records to find cause of offence ; and his views were 
very extreme. New England had refused to treat for 
a cession of Indian lands on the Ohio ; she had opposed 
the Louisiana purchase; she had opposed the admission 
of Louisiana as a State and also the admission of Mis- 
sissippi and of Alissouri ; and she had given no assist- 
ance in the War of 18 12 against British invasion which 
had been so disastrous to the West. 

In voting for the Louisiana purchase four New Eng- 
enders were in favor of it, and as it required a two- 
thirds vote, could have defeated it. To charge New 
England or the Northeast, as Benton did, with a desire 

239 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

" to cripple and strangle the West," because some New 
Englanders voted against the Louisiana purchase, was 
a mere making up of a case. There were honest doubts 
as to the constitutionality of the Louisiana purchase and 
honest doubts as to the advisability of admitting Louisi- 
ana as a State. Jefferson himself had such doubts. 
The enlargement of our territory, especially the addition 
of slave territory, might endanger the Union ; and as 
a matter of fact, it did ; and the sudden incorporation 
of a foreign population like that at New Orleans was a 
new and serious condition. 

The admission of Mississippi was the admission of 
more slave territory. The admission was not, it seems, 
seriously opposed ; but in some of its stages distin- 
guished southerners, as well as New Englanders, voted 
against it. In the case of Missouri, the opposition to 
its admission was distinctly because it was to come in 
as a slave State, extending slavery still farther north. 
Those who voted against its admission were voting to 
save the West from what the westerners themselves 
admitted to be a curse ; and the members of Congress 
from the Northwest voted against the slavery clause. 

Benton's attempt was obviously very strained, be- 
cause the West had grown and prospered. New Eng- 
landers had poured into it and largely built up its 
prosperity. Ohio, in fact, was almost a New England 
community. Of the thirteen original States nine were 
north of the Potomac. By their votes and influence in 
Congress they could have ruined the West, sealed up 
the Mississippi, and refused to receive western States 
into the Union. They did exactly the reverse. " Even 
the five New England States," said Senator Sprague, 
" constituting as they did more than one-third of the 
whole number, might forever have excluded Louisiana 
and Florida, and have rejected every treaty for enlarg- 
ing or confirming the privileges of the West." But 
instead of that they nourished and sustained the West, 
accepted it as a part of themselves and part of the Union, 

240 



THE GREAT DEBATE 

until from being more than two-thirds the North had 
now become a minority. 

It also suited Benton's purpose to say that since 
1825, when the West had joined the Northeast in elect- 
ing a New England man to the Presidency, New Eng- 
land had been very favorably disposed towards the 
West, had, in fact, courted the West in the hope of 
making the alliance perpetual. 

These arguments on both sides anticipate somewhat 
the debate, but their statement seems necessary to show 
the conditions amidst which Foot introduced his so- 
called innocent resolution. If there had been no Benton 
in the Senate, the resolution might have been passed 
without much trouble, and the famous debate never have 
occurred; for Kane's attack upon the resolution was 
comparatively mild. But Benton assailed it in long and 
vehement speeches. Though worded in the form of an 
inquiry, it seemed to him to imply that there should be 
som.e stoppage of the sale of public lands and a dis- 
couragement to emigration; for emigrants, he said, 
would not start when they heard that the sale of lands 
might be cut off and the office of Surveyor General pos- 
sibly abolished. He denounced it as a mere New 
England trick to checkmate " my graduation bill," as 
he called it, and to stop migration and keep laboring 
people in the East to work in the mills created by the 
accursed protective tariff. 

The Senators from New England and the Middle 
States were for the most part opposed to Benton's 
graduation bill and apparently for the reason that it 
was a mere tampering and tinkering with the land 
S3'stem in a small way without going far enough to 
accomplish any substantial improvement. They would 
have preferred some method of getting rid of the specu- 
lators who were usually the only buyers at sales of the 
public lands. In fact, a great company had been formed 
for buying at these sales ; and the graduation bill 
would not interfere with speculators. The bill, more- 
16 241 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

over, provided for giving to the States in which they lay 
the lands that could not in five years be sold at the 
reduced prices.^ This was quite contrary to the long- 
established principles of the land system, and some 
Senators held that Congress had not the constitutional 
power to give away to a State the land or property 
that was held in trust for the whole Union. 

Senator Foot's ideas as disclosed in a speech he 
made at the close of the debate were that only halt the 
land that had ever been sold by the Government was in 
the hands of actual settlers ; the other half was in the 
hands of the speculators ; tliat more lands had been sur- 
veyed and were on the market than would be sold in 
many years to come at the usual rate of less than a 
million acres per year; and that the commissioner of 
the land office had recommended that the number of sur- 
veyors and land offices be reduced. The limitation of 
sales. Foot said, would discourage only speculators, not 
actual settlers. He believed in the regular methodical 
system by which Ohio had been settled and had become 
such a marvel of progress. This was the New Eng- 
land method of advancing into the wilderness township 
by township, each township sold, settled, and com- 
pletely self-defensive before the next one was started ; 
no straggling of squatters far ahead to cause Indian 
wars and massacres. 

In order to make his resolution more palatable to 
Benton and some others. Foot amended it by adding the 
words, " or whether it be expedient to adopt measures 
to hasten the sales and extend more rapidly the surveys 
of the public lands." But it was of no use, and the 
whole resolution was denounced by Benton as just as 
much of an attack upon the West as ever. 

The country was divided at that time by geography 
and the conditions of transportation and trade into 
three distinct divisions more at variance than any 

* Gales and Seaton's Debates, ist Sess. 21st Congress, vol. i 
vi, p. 413- 

242 



THE GREAT DEBATE 

divisions in our time. There was, first of all, New 
England and the Middle States, usually spoken of in the 
debates as the Northeast, which were free from slavery 
and hated slavery, devoted to the tariff, and prospering 
under it. Then there was the South sufTering, as it 
believed, great loss of money every day from the work- 
ing of the tariff and devoted to slavery as a profitable 
institution. Third, was the West almost entirely iso- 
lated from the Northeast and even from the South, 
because there were no railways across the Alleghany 
Mountains. No products of the West could come 
east because it was up stream by water and over hills 
by land. The only possible and profitable outlet for 
western products was to float them down the streams 
that flowed into the Mississippi and down that stream 
to New Orleans. 

These divisions were constantly suggesting the ques- 
tion of disunion ; and slavery, though not so serious a 
problem as it afterwards became, was nevertheless in 
every one's mind. The South and West having elected 
Jackson President were full of confidence and inclined 
to assume an air of arrogance. The South felt that 
she had broken what to her was the dangerous alliance 
of the West with the Northeast, had killed the coalition, 
or bargain, and corruption which a few years before had 
elected Adams. She was jubilant; she expected the 
West would assist her in annulling the detested pro- 
tective tariff. The West on her part was equally pleased 
and hopeful ; for she expected the South to assist her 
in remodelling the public land system and in obtaining 
more immigrants and more rapid development. Sena- 
tor Benton and Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, sat 
near each other, almost with their arms round each 
other's necks, and were continually exchanging flatter- 
ing and friendly communications. The situation was 
ripe for all that happened ; every one had a chip on his 
shoulder; and it would have been still more exciting if 
Cailioun had not been kept out of the debate. As Vice- 
President and presiding of^cer of the Senate he could 

243 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

only listen to a contest into which he must have longed 
to enter. 

Accordingly, when on the 19th of January Senator 
Hayne, of South Carolina, took his turn to speak in 
the Great Debate, he went one step farther than the 
others. He was the first Senator of extreme southern 
views to take part ; and his speech marks an epoch in 
history. But would it ever have been heard of without 
Webster's reply? 

Hayne criticized quite freely the whole land system 
of the government and made a strong bid for the favor 
of the West, very much as Benton had made a strong 
bid for the favor of the South. The debate might be 
described as the wooing debate. In fact, Benton sug- 
gested that name for it. The Northeast and the South 
were wooing the fair young maid of the West. 

Hayne suggested that the lands should have been 
given for nothing or sold at much lower prices to the 
settlers ; they were sold high so as to keep pauper labor 
in the Northeast for the manufacturing under the pro- 
tective tariff ; the public lands properly belonged to 
the western people who risked themselves in the wil- 
derness ; the National Government had no moral right! 
to make money out of the lands and grow rich ; the 
revenue thus accumulated would become a mere corrup- 
tion fund, and, worse still, would tend to consolidate 
the government. 

" Sir, an immense national treasury would be a fund for 
corruption. It would enable Congress and the executive to 
exercise a control over States, as well as over great interests 
in the country, nay even over corporations and individuals — 
utterly destructive of the purity and fatal to the duration of 
our institutions. It would be equally fatal to the sovereignty 
and independence of the States. Sir, I am one of those who 
believe that the very life of our system is the independence of 
the States, and that there is no evil more to be deprecated than 
the consolidation of this government." (Gales and Seaton's 
Debates in Congress, vol. vi, Part I, p. 34.) 

This, with a few sentences that led up to it and fol- j 
lowed it, was all he said that was in any way different 

244 









THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

from what had been said by western Senators. But he 
made all his points with much skill ; for he was an 
excellent speaker who could hold with a chain of reason- 
ing the attention of any audience. 

He was one of the men of bright mind and liberal 
associations that South Carolina then produced. He 
had stepped into an extensive law practice when he was 
barely twenty-one. He was accustomed to the wealth 
and social ease of Charleston life and to the practical 
interests and broadening influences of the plantation 
aristocracy. It was the great period of the Caro- 
linians and he was one of the best of them ; not so 
comprehensive and intellectual as the Scotch-Irishman, 
Calhoun, but of an equally attractive personality. His 
speeches do not, of course, read anything like as well 
as Webster's. But they were better in their delivery 
than in print, because his manner was alert and prompt 
and his personality vivacious and captivating. Though 
much younger than Webster, he had been longer in the 
Senate. Webster seems to have had a good deal of 
regard for him, and in a letter written many years 
after this debate speaks of his talents and integrity in 
high terms. ^ Acording to the testimony collected by 
jhis recent biographer Hayne had quite a reputation as 
a debater and an orator in the North as well as in the 
I South. 

I Webster had been much occupied in the Supreme 
] Court during this first half of the month of January, and 
had been very little of the time in the Senate. He 
evidently was not in sympathy with Foot's resolution. 
He said openly that the resolution was unnecessary; 
but as a New England man he did not feel called upon 
to follow Senator Woodbury, of New Hampshire, in 
opposing it. In the afternoon of the 19th of January, 
however, he came into the Senate with his court papers, 
as he says, under his arm, and heard Hayne's speech. 
Though he had not heard Benton's speech and the 



'Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 316. 

24s 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

speeches of the others, he was no doubt told substantially 
all that they had said, and Benton's hostile attitude 
towards New England was well known in the Senate. 

Webster saw at once that the debate was going very 
strongly against his party ; that New England was being 
put in a most unpopular position before the whole 
country, and that the Foot resolution should never have 
been offered. What was the use of irritating the West 
by such a resolution at a time when the obvious policy 
was to ally the West with New England? The resolu- 
tion was accomplishing nothing except to bring before 
the public all the supposed instances of the Northeast's 
jealousy and prejudice against the West that the indus- 
try of IBenton and Hayne could collect. 

■His own duty was clear. He would be expected 
to defend New England. He must do his best and 
show instances of her favorable regard for the West. 
So the next day he made a speech on these lines ; and 
to get rid of Foot's resolution as soon as possible, he 
moved that it be indefinitely postponed. 

In this speech on the 20th, now known as his First 
Reply to Hayne, he showed that the General Govern- 
ment had spent millions of dollars in extinguishing the 
Indian title to the western lands, that armies had been 
sent and expensive wars waged to protect the settlers 
from the Indians. He called to mind the campaigns 
of Harmar and of St. Clair, and the final campaign 
of Wayne, in 1794, by which, for the first time, the 
country northwest of the Ohio was rendered safe for 
settlement. In glowing terms he described the marvel- 
lous growth of the State of Ohio since that year 1794. 
Ohio was the wonder of development of the age. Could 
the land system of the government which had accom- 
plished such results, he asked, be accused of meanness 
or jealousy? 

All this was undoubtedly true, and it was stated in 
language which is still a delight to read. He showed 
that the public land east of the Mississippi was a gift 

246 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

from the States to the General Government in trust to 
sell for the benefit of all. It could not be given away ; 
if sold cheap in large quantities it would pass into the 
hands of speculators ; the rapid growth of the whole 
West was proof of the beneficence of the land system 
and the friendly feeling of the rest of the country for 
the West. 

Hayne had opposed the land system because it 
tended to make the government rich, to give it a per- 
manent fund, and that meant consolidation. He wished 
to see the time when the government should not possess 
a shilling of permanent revenue. If he could speak the 
magical word, he had said, and by that word convert 
the whole capitol into gold, that word would not be 
spoken. In this sense the public debt was also an evil. 
It should be paid off and extinguished completely as 
soon as possible, because to have it or increase it also 
tended to consolidation. 

This was the basis, the first principle of the nullifica- 
tion or secession argument, the assumption that the 
consolidation of the American States into a united 
national government is an admitted evil, because it 
will impair the free action of the individual States and 
prevent them resisting or annulling laws of the Gen- 
eral Government that were injuring their interests. 

In this, his first reply, Webster answered that 
assumption and went no further. Consolidation, he 
said, meant no more than the strengthening of the 
Union ; and " no doubt the public lands and everj^thing 
else in which we have a common interest tend to con- 
solidation, and to this species of consolidation every 
true American ought to be attached. This is the sense 
in which the framers of the Constitution use the word 

j consolidation, and in this sense I adopt and cherish it." 
They tell us in the letter submitting the Constitution 

j to the consideration of the country that 

" In all our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily 
in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of 

247 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which 
is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national 
existence. This important consideration, seriously and deeply 
impressed upon our minds, led each State in the convention 
to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude than might 
otherwise have been expected." (Works, Ed. 1851, vol. iii, 
p. 258.) 

These two brief arguments, one by Hayne and the 
other by Webster, were as far as the debate was carried 
for the moment on the secession question. In many re- 
spects Webster's very brief reply on consolidation is 
overwhelmingly strong and has never been improved 
upon. It lies at the foundation of all subsequent argu- 
ments for union. The framers of the Constitution pub- 
licly announced that the instrument was intended to 
effect consolidation of the Union, that consolidation 
was necessary to national existence, and the States in 
voting to adopt the Constitution must have intended 
to adopt it as a means of consolidation. When we add 
to this that the old articles of confederation admittedly 
constituted a mere league of the States from which any 
State might retire when it pleased ; that this was found 
so weak a form of government that it was useless ; that 
the Constitution was admittedly framed to make a 
stronger government, was announced by its framers as 
a consolidation and accepted by the States with that 
notice, it is logical to conclude that the States in accept- 
ing the new instrument did not intend that any one of 
them had the legal right to secede. If they had the 
right to secede, what was the use of a new form of 
government in place of the old Articles of Confed- 
eration ? 

In all the subsequent twists and turns of this debate 
and also of the debate several years afterwards, Webster 
frequently harked back to this foundation statement; 
and it still remains unmoved and unanswered as the 
argument for union and nationality. 

Next he took up the attacks upon New England, 
which, he said, was the " main occasion " for his ad- 

248 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

dressing the Senate. This was the difficult part of his 
undertaking, and he had evidently postponed it so that 
he could first lay a groundwork for the favorable re- 
gard of his audience. He had done this with his 
argument aganst nullification and by showing that the 
General Government had certainly not been illiberal 
to the West. He must now say something that would 
offset the effect of that irritation against migration 
which had so often cropped out among the masses in 
New England. 

New England was innocent, he said, of the protec- 
tive tariff of which the West complained. The tariff 
had originally been carried by southern votes ; and 
New England simply accepted it and adapted herself 
to it. New England, he said, had given to the West 
her system of land survey which prevented litigation and 
left the settler in peace to cultivate the soil ; a far better 
method than the southern system which had been so 
productive of needless litigation. The famous ordi- 
nance of 1787 for the government of the territory north- 
west of the Ohio, establishing free schools and prohibit- 
ing slavery in that region, and under which that vast 
territory had grown so rapidly to greatness, had been 
drafted by Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, and passed 
in Congress by the aid of Masachusetts votes. So far 
from being hostile to the West, New England had im- 
poverished herself and steadily advocated measures 
which had drained off her own population to people the 
Mississippi Valley. There was not one measure favor- 
able to the West which could have been passed without 
the New England votes in its favor. 

He enlarged with great eloquence on this. He gave 
as instances the Cumberland road and the Portland 
Canal, which had been voted to the West; and this 
seems to have been true enough. In the distribution of 
internal improvements the West had been given her 
share. 

His tribute of praise to Nathan Dane, as the author 

249 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of the ordinance of 1787 of the Northwest Territory, 
was a striking part of his speech. He compared Dane 
to Solon and Lycurgus and rather to Dane's advantage 
over those lawgivers of antiquity ; and he proudly 
declared that this famous Ordinance for the Government 
of the Northwest had been carried in Congress by New 
England votes. Here he unfortunately overstepped the 
mark; and Benton was quick to point out that the 
famous ordinance was first reported by a committee of 
Congress in 1784, two years before Dane was in Con- 
gress. The non-slavery clause of it was moved by Mr. 
King, of New York, in 1785; and not until 1786 was 
the ordinance approved by a committee of which Dane 
was a member ; and when finally adopted by Congress 
it was carried as much by southern as by northern 
votes. Eight States were present, three northern and 
five southern, and they all voted for it. 

Webster afterwards explained this by saying that the 
ordinance when first prepared by the committee was in 
the form of mere resolutions, and that Dane, when he 
was put on the second committee, arranged these reso- 
lutions in the final form. It was, he said, like the 
Declaration of Independence which Jefferson drew up 
from ideas which had been often voted and resolved 
in the assemblies and other popular bodies of the 
country. 

Webster was very good at these escapes. He had 
not been a quarter of a century at the bar for nothing. 
He closed by quoting from a speech of Mr. A^lcDufiie, a 
member of Congress from South Carolina, who in 1825 
had complained that Webster was urging the building 
of highways to the West. Such roads, McDufhe had 
said, were very injurious to the South because they im- 
poverished her by drawing away her population to ihe 
West. The West was settling fast enough without 
injuring the South by this artificial method of drawing 
away her people. 

This was a good point, and very irritating to Hayne, 

250 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

because it showed that the South had complained of the 
drawing away of her population just about as much as 
the Northeast had complained. It had, in fact, been a 
universal complaint of the whole Atlantic seaboard. 
It had not been serious in any efifects on the West ; the 
people migrated westward all the same ; but western 
politicians like Benton worked it up into political capital 
to suit their purposes. 

As soon as he sat down Benton rose, and in a very 
effective speech called attention to the mistakes in re- 
gard to Nathan Dane and the votes of New England, 
which have been mentioned. Webster, in closing, had 
moved that the Foot resolution be indefinitely postponed, 
and Benton in high delight commented on this as a con- 
fession of weakness. The Senator from Massachu- 
setts, he said, is accepting my ground against the 
resolution. He saw that it would ruin his party ; that 
the South and West were allied against it. He fears to 
bring it to a direct vote. He would slip it aside by 
a postponement. His method is ingenious, " that of 
starting a new subject, and moving the indeiinite post- 
ponement of the impending one." 

The following day, January 21, Senator Chambers, 
of Maryland, a great friend and admirer of Webster, 
suggested a postponement of the debate because Mr. 
Webster had engagements in the Supreme Court. But 
Hayne objected. He saw, he said, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts in his seat, and presumed that he could 
make arrangements that would enable him to be present. 
He was unwilling that the subject should be postponed. 

" He would not deny that some things had fallen from 
that gentleman which rankled here (touching his breast) from 
which he would desire, at once, to relieve himself. The 
gentleman had discharged his fire in the face of the Senate. 
He hoped he would now afford him the opportunity of returning 
the shot. 

" Mr. Webster: I am ready to receive it. Let the dis- 
cussion proceed." 

251 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Benton then spoke for about an hour in continua- 
tion of his speech of .the day before. These speeches 
by Benton gave Hayne time to prepare himself ; and as 
soon as Benton finished, Hayne began a very elaborate 
speech, and the ablest he had ever made; in many 
respects one of the most telling speeches that up to that 
time had been delivered in the Senate. Though so 
different in method and manner from those of Clay and 
without Clay's pecuhar felicity of language, it yet de- 
serves to be ranked with some of the best by that 
distinguished Kentucky statesman. We can measure 
the quality of it when we consider that it roused Web- 
ster as no speech in Congress had ever roused him 
before. It forced him to a defence which has become a 
classic. 

A large part of Hayne's speech was composed of 
what may be called local hits, clear enough to the people 
of that day, but which now require an explanation. For 
this reason, and because of some ugly statements, very 
unpleasant for many years to northern ears, it has been 
the custom in describing the debate to confine quota- 
tions to Webster's reply. But the events of secession 
are now far enough in the past for a more liberal view 
and for as fair an analysis of Hayne's argument as it is 
possible for a northerner to make. 

Hayne's first object was to try to connect Webster 
with the old " bargain and corruption," the turning over 
of the Clay electoral votes to be added to those of 
John Quincy Adams, and make him President in ex- 
change for the Secretaryship of State for Clay, and per- 
petual distribution of the Presidency and honors betw^een 
the Northeast and the West. To connect a statesman's 
name with the old " bargain and corruption " supersti- 
tion, the coalition, as it was called in polite language, 
was, in those days, as already explained, one of the 
most effective smirches that could be given. 

Hayne began by complaining that Webster had 
attacked him as making charges of New England's 

252 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

hostility to the West, when, as a matter of fact, those 
charges had been made principally by Senator Benton. 

" Why is this ? Has the gentleman discovered in former 
controversies with the gentleman from Missouri that he is 
overmatched by that gentleman? And does he hope for an 
easy victory over a more feeble adversary? Has the gentle- 
man's distempered fancy been disturbed by gloomy forebodings 
of new alliances to be founded at which he hinted? Has the 
ghost of the murdered coalition come back like the ghost of 
the murdered Banquo, to ' sear the eyeballs ' of the gentleman 
and will not 'down at his bidding?' Are dark visions of 
broken hopes and honors lost forever, still floating before his 
heated imagination? Sir, if it be his object to thrust me 
between the gentleman from Missouri and himself in order to 
rescue the East from the contest it has provoked with the 
West, he shall not be gratified. Sir, I will not be dragged 
into the defence of my friend from Missouri. The South 
shall not be forced into a conflict not its own. The gentleman 
from Missouri is able to fight his own battles. The gallant 
West needs no aid from the South to repel any attack which 
may be made on them from any quarter. Let the gentleman 
from Massachusetts controvert the facts and arguments of the 
gentleman from Missouri — if he can ; and if he win the victory, 
let him wear its honors. I shall not deprive him of his 
laurels." 

This was to make it appear that Webster's ambition 
for the Presidency or other high office in the govern- 
ment had led him into the " bargain and corruption," 
and now that the bargain or coalition had been killed 
or murdered by the alliance of the West with the 
South and the election of Jackson, Webster was going 
about as a disappointed man, constantly haunted by 
the ghost of the murdered coalition. Therefore, he 
dared not attack Benton, who was one of those who 
had killed the alliance of the East with the West and 
was now cementing more securely the alliance of the 
West with the South. It was clear enough ; but there 
was an error in the application of the quotation from 
I Shakespeare which, as we shall see, Webster was quick 
to seize upon. 

After trying to connect Webster with the " bargain 

253 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and corruption," Hayne's second principal object was to 
attack the conduct of Webster and New England in the 
War of 1812, show the unpatriotic conduct of New 
England, and her strong leaning to disunion, which, he 
said, completely cut her off from all right to criticize 
any tendency to disunion in South Carolina, and, in fact, 
fully justified South Carolina in protecting herself by 
disunion or nullification from' the iniquities of the pro- 
tective tariff as New England had protected herself by 
threats of disunion from what she believed to be the 
iniquities of the embargo. He took full advantage of 
the mistake Webster had made in exalting Nathan Dane 
as a Solon. 

" Sir, I doubt not the Senator will feel some compassion 
for our ignorance, when I tell him, that so little are we 
acquainted with the modern great men of New England, that, 
until he informed us yesterday, that we possessed a Solon and 
a Lycurgus in the person of Nathan Dane, he was only known 
to the South as a member of a celebrated assembly called and 
known by the name of ' the Hartford Convention.' In the 
proceedings of that assembly, which I hold in my hand (at 
page 19), it will be found, in a few lines, the history of Nathan 
Dane ; and a little further on, there is conclusive evidence of 
that ardent devotion to the interests of the new States, which, 
it seems, has given him a just claim to the title of ' Father of 
the West.' By the 2d resolution of the ' Hartford Convention,' 
it is declared, ' that it is expedient to attempt to make pro- 
vision for restraining Congress in the exercise of an unlimited 
power to make new States, and admitting them into the Union.' 
So much for Nathan Dane, of Beverly, Massachusetts." 

In order to make the disunion tendency of New 
England appear the greater crime, he exalted the devo- 
tion of South Carolina to the Union, especially in the 
Revolution. 

"If there be one State in this Union (and I say it not in 
a boastful spirit) that may challenge comparison with any 
other for an uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devo- 
tion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. Sir, from 
the very commencement of the Revolution, up to this hour, 
there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully 
made; no service she has ever hesitated to perform." . . . 

254 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

" What, sir, was the conduct of the South during the 
Revokition? Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in 
that glorious struggle. But great as is the praise which belongs 
to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the South. They 
espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a generous zeal, 
which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in 
the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of 
neither ships nor seamen to create commercial rivalship, they 
might have found in their situation a guarantee that their trade 
would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. 
But trampling on all considerations, either of interest or of 
safety, they rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for prin- 
ciple, perilled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never was 
there exhibited, in the history of the world, higher examples 
of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance, than 
by the whigs of Carolina, during that Revolution." 

This was all perfectly true. No one could deny it. 
Hayne was certainly speaking well — 'more than well, 
eloquently. And in the War of 1812, called in derision 
by New England, said Hayne, " the southern war," 
what was the conduct of South Carolina ? The war was 
for the protection of northern shipping and New Eng- 
land seamen. 

"What interest had the South in that contest? If they 
had sat down coldly to calculate the value of their interests 
involved in it, they would have found that they had everything 
to lose and nothing to gain. But, sir, with that generous 
devotion to country so characteristic of the South, they only 
asked if the rights of any portion of their fellow-citizens had 
been invaded ; and when told that Northern ships and New 
England seamen had been arrested on the common highway of 
nations, they felt that the honor of their country was assailed ; 
and, acting on that exalted sentiment. ' which feels a stain 
like a wound,' they resolved to seek, in open war, for a redress 
of those injuries which it did not become freemen to endure." 

Then followed a terrible arraignment of Massa- 
chusetts, her subserviency to England, her excuses for 
i England's brutality and cruelty to our sailors, that Eng- 
land had done us no essential injury, that instead of 
seizing our ships she had protected them, that if she 
had taken sailors from our vessels it was by mistake, 
because she could not distinguish them from her own. 

255 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The conduct of Massachusetts, declared Hayne, was 
in that war so unpatriotic and disgraceful, her acts in 
opposing the war so shameless, that her " own legisla- 
ture, but a few years ago, actually blotted them out 
from the records, as a stain upon the honor of the 
country." 

" Nothing was left undone to embarrass the financial 
operations of the Government, to prevent the enlistment of 
troops, to keep back the men and money of New England from 
the service of the Union, to force the President from his seat. 
Yes, sir, ' the Island of Elba ! or a halter ! ' were the alterna- 
tives they presented to the excellent and venerable James 
Madison. Sir, the war was further opposed by openly carrying 
on illicit trade with the enemy, by permitting that enemy to 
establish himself on the very soil of Massachusetts, and by 
opening a free trade between Great Britain and America, with 
a separate custom house. Yes, sir, those who cannot endure 
the thought that we should insist on a free trade in time of 
profound peace, could without scruple claim and exercise the 
right of carrying on a free trade with the enemy in a time of 
war ; and, finally, by getting up the renowned ' Hartford Con- 
vention,' and preparing the way for an open resistance to the 
Government, and a separation of the States. Sir, if I am asked 
for the proof of those things, I fearlessly appeal to cotempo- 
rary history, to the public documents of the country, to the 
recorded opinions and acts of public assemblies, to the decla- 
ration and acknowledgments, since made, of the Executive and 
Legislature of Massachusetts herself." . . . 

"But I will ask, with what justice or propriety can the 
South be accused of disloyalty from that quarter? If we had 
any evidence that the Senator from Massachusetts had admon- 
ished his brethren then, he might with a better grace assume 
the office of admonishing us now." . . . 

" At this dark period of our National affairs, where was 
the Senator from Massachusetts? How were his political 
associates employed ? * Calculating the value of the Union ? ' 
Yes, sir, that was the propitious moment, when our country 
stood alone, the last hope of the world, struggling for her 
existence against the colossal power of Great Britain, ' concen- 
trated in one mighty effort to crush us at a blow '—that was 
the chosen hour to revive the grand scheme of building up 
' a great Northern Confederacy '—a scheme which, it is stated 
in the work before me, had its origin as far back as the year 
1796, and which appears never to have been entirely abandoned. 
In the language of the writers of that day (1796). 'rather 

256 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

than have a constitution such as the anti-Federalists were 
contending for (such as we now are contending for), the 
Union ought to be dissolved.' " 

We can see now why for many a long year Hayne 
was the idol and hero of the South and of the Demo- 
crats of the North. As an attack his speech was hardly 
inferior to some of the famous invectives of the world. 
His argument that Webster and the New Englanders 
had no right to rebuke the South for disunion senti- 
ment was, of course, fallacious. New England had 
been in the wrong in 1812, but that did not make Caro- 
lina right when preaching the same disunion in 1830. 
She should have learned better in twenty years. New 
England had repented of her sin. Hayne himself had 
cited the resolution of the Massachusetts Legislature 
repudiating the doctrine of 181 2. To say that the 
mouths of Webster and his constituents were forever 
closed, that they could never rebuke in others the evil 
of which they had repented, was illogical, impractical 
and inexpedient. But as a slap at New England and 
Webster this disclosure of their sin and repentance was 
very telling and delighted those who wanted to hear it. 
It had in it so much of the stump speech effectiveness 
that it was the most important part of Hayne's reply. 
It would be going too far to say that this part of his 
speech prevented Webster from ever attaining the 
Presidency or even a nomination for it. But certain it 
is that the objection given out by a section of his party 
on a certain occasion for not nominating him was that 
he had been a Federalist ; that, in short, he was vul- 
nerable to this sort of stump speech attack for his opposi- 
tion to the War of 18 12. As that war receded into 
the past it became more and more glorious, and those 
who had opposed it more and more unpopular in spite 
of all repentance. 

Many of the minor passages of Hayne's speech are 
full of interest and throw a great deal of light on the 
history of the times. In fact, the speech is a mine of 
17 257 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

historical information. His defence of slavery as it 
then existed in the South, that it had indirectly con- 
tributed to the wealth of the North, that though theo- 
retically an evil it was practically a blessing, is as clever 
as any defence of it that has ever been made. He put 
forth some of his best efforts at this point ; for he had 
been greatly irritated by Webster's restrained but ill- 
concealed contempt for the " peculiar institution." He 
got back at him by expressing the contempt and pity 
common among southerners at that time for those " out- 
casts of the world," the " free people of color " of the 
North. 

" Sir, there does not exist, on the face of the whole earth, 
a population so poor, so wretched, so vile, so loathsome, so 
utterly destitute of all the comforts, conveniences and decen- 
cies of life, as the unfortunate blacks of Philadelphia, New 
York and Boston. Liberty has been to them the greatest of 
calamities, the heaviest of curses. Sir, I have had some oppor- 
tunities of making comparisons between the condition of the 
free negroes of the North and the slaves of the South, and 
the comparison has left not only an indelible impression of 
the advantages of the latter, but has gone far to reconcile me 
to slavery itself." 

He assailed what he considered Webster's incon- 
sistency in opposing the tariff of 1824 and advocating 
the subsequent tariff of 1828, the " bill of abominations." 

" Sir, if I had erected to my own fame so proud a monu- 
ment as that which the gentleman built up in 1824, and I could 
have been tempted to destroy it with my own hands, I should 
hate the voice that should ring the ' accursed tariff in my 
ears.' " 

Hayne tried hard to answer Webster's argument 
that the object of the Constitution, when adopted by 
the States, was consolidation. 

"Sir, the gentleman is mistaken. The object of the 
framers of the Constitution, as disclosed in that address, was 
not the consolidation of the Government, but ' the consolida- 
tion of the Union.' It was not to draw power from the States, 
in order to transfer it to a great National Government, but, in 
the language of the Constitution itself, ' to form a more perfect 

258 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

union.' And by what means? By 'establishing justice,' 'pro- 
moting domestic tranquillity,' and ' securing the blessings of 
f liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' This is the true reading 
of the Constitution. But, according to the gentleman's reading, 
the object of the Constitution was to consolidate the Govern- 
ment, and the means would seem to be the promotion of 
injustice, causing domestic discord, and depriving the States 
and the people ' of the blessings of liberty ' forever." 

This distinction between consolidating the Union 
and consoHdating the government was an absurd one; 
and he misconstrued what Webster had said. If the 
Union is consoHdated, necessarily the government is 
consolidated to the same extent. Ilayne had reserved 
for the close a constitutional argument; but it was 
very weak and made a poor ending for his speech. He 
had none of Webster's skill in leading up to a powerful 
climax at the end. 

His final argument was nothing more than a mere 
recital of the well-known Virginia and Kentucky reso- 
lutions, as they were called, which had appeared as the 
doctrines or creed of his party in 1798, when it was 
much incensed against the alien and sedition laws of 
Congress and inclined, like the New Englanders of 181 2, 
to hold Hartford conventions, and talk about the rights 
of a State as somewhat more important than the Union. 
The Virginia resolutions had said that — 

" In case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise 
of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States 
who are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, 
to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for 
maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, 
rights and liberties appertaining to them." 

The next year the subject was again gone over in 
Virginia, and on a report by Madison the doctrine was 
reiterated in merelv different lans-uas^e. 

"The States then being the parties to the constitutional 
compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity 
that there can be no tribunal, above their authority to decide 
in the last resort." 

259 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

This might mean merely the right of revolution, 
which neither Webster nor any one else denied. If 
any government becomes absolutely intolerable the peo- 
ple, as a last resort, may, of course, change it by force. 
This was a recognized American doctrine, set forth 
originally in the Declaration of Independence. The 
last resort is, of course, revolution and the sword. 
But the question at issue in 1830 was whether a State 
had the right peacefully and under the Constitution to 
nullify Acts of Congress or retire from the Union. 

The Kentucky resolutions, drafted by Jefferson, 
declared : 

" That the Government created by this compact was not 
made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers 
delegated to itself, since that would make its discretion, and 
not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; but as in all 
other cases of compact among parties having no common 
judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as 
well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." 

This again may mean merely the right of revolution. 
But if each State can "judge for itself '' in every in- 
stance, and this is a peaceable right under the Consti- 
tution, then the Union under the Constitution is exactly 
the same as it was under the old Articles of Confedera- 
tion. 

The essential weakness of these Virginia and Ken- 
tucky resolutions was that they were mere party asser- 
tions for political purposes, and Hke all such assertions 
somewhat vague and general. They might mean, as 
some Virginians maintained, that a State, under the 
circumstances mentioned, had the right to protest and 
remonstrate, but nothing more. 

As soon as Hayne closed his speech Webster rose to 
reply; but as it was late in the afternoon the Senate 
adjourned, which gave Webster the floor next day, the 
26th of January, a great day in his life. The galleries 
and the Senate Chamber itself had been crowded with 
visitors to hear Hayne. A lady sat in his chair while 

260 




PORTRAIT OF WEBSTER BY HARDING 
In the [lossession of J. Carroll Payne, Esq. 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

he stood speaking by her side.^ Now every available 
place was again filled ; and the crowd extended out into 
the corridors and down the staircases. Webster had 
never, he afterwards said, spoken " in the presence of an 
audience so eager and so sympathetic." His notes for 
a speech that fills seventy pages of print were written 
with great brevity on five pages of letter paper. But 
they had evidently been written merely to start the 
subject in his mind. He had no need to refer to them. 
" All I had ever known," he said, " seemed to be floating 
before me." 

But there were not a few friends both of him and of 
the northern cause who were filled with anxiety and 
feared that he would never be able to answer the on- 
slaught of Hayne. Edward Everett in great uneasiness 
went to his house that evening, and, finding him cool 
and serene, thought he was not aware of the magnitude 
of the contest. He asked him if he had taken notes of 
Hayne's speech. " Yes," said Webster, taking from 
his vest pocket a piece of paper no bigger than the 
palm of his hand. " I have it all; that is his speech." 
The truth was that though apparently with little time 
for preparation he had had in reality the preparation 
of years. He had prepared himself several times be- 
fore for public land speeches and constitutional speeches. 
Before he rose to speak they say that another anx- 
ious friend passing near his seat said in a low voice, 
"Are you loaded, Senator?" To which he grimly re- 
plied : " Seven fingers," a jest which referred to the 
muzzle-loading shotguns of those days which, when 
heavily charged, caused the ramrod to stand out seven 
fingers above the muzzle. 

He began his reply with a passage that has often 
been admired ; and as delivered by his powerful presence 
and deep voice, it was, no doubt, very impressive: 



'Mrs. S. H. Smith, "First Forty Years of Washing- 
ton," p. 310. 

261 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

" Mr. President : When the mariner has been tossed for 
many days in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he 
naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the 
earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain 
how far the elements have driven him from his true course. 
Let us imitate this prudence, and, before we fioat farther on 
the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we 
departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where 
we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution before the 
Senate." 

He showed how the debate had wandered. He dis- 
posed of preliminary matters. He had been in the 
Suprem.e Court when Benton's attack on the East had 
been deUvered and had not heard it. He selected 
Hayne's speech for a reply because he had heard it. 

" Sir, I answered the gentleman's speech because I hap- 
pened to hear it, and because, also, I chose to give an answer 
to that speech, which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to 
produce injurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire who 
was the original drawer of the bill, I found a responsible 
indorser before me, and it was my purpose to hold him liable, 
and bring him to his just responsibility without delay." 

He ridiculed the notion that he had avoided Benton 
because he feared to be overmatched ; and then he 
addressed himself to the coalition, the " bargain and 
corruption " which was supposed to have made Adams 
President. It really had nothing to do with the merits 
of the debate; but every Whig usually had to defend 
himself from it at some time, either by a duel like 
Clay's with Randolph, or repeited public denials. The 
only defence was a denial. The charge could not be 
proved ; it could merely be asserted with more or less 
innuendo ; and the answer was necessarily no different. 
In Webster's case the attempt to fasten it on him was 
very strained. Hayne had to do it by a confusion of 
words and a very obvious misapplication of the story 
of Banquo's ghost. It would be Benton, the murderer 
of the coalition, who would be afraid of its ghost, not 
any of the coalition's friends, and the passage in which 

262 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

Webster brought this out has always been one of the 
most popular of the reply. 

" But, Sir, the honorable member was not, for other 
reasons, entirely happy in his allusion to the story of Banquo's 
murder and Banquo's ghost. It was not, I think, the friends, 
but the enemies of the murdered Banquo, at whose bidding his 
spirit would not down. The honorable gentleman is fresh in 
his reading of the EngHsh classics, and can put me right if I 
am wrong ; but, according to my poor recollection, it was at 
those who had begun with caresses and ended with foul and 
treacherous murder that the gory locks were shaken. The 
ghost of Banquo, like that of Hamlet, was an honest ghost. 
It disturbed no innocent man. It knew where its appearance 
would strike terror, and who would cry out, a ghost ! It made 
itself visible in the right quarter, and compelled the guilty and 
the conscience-smitten, and none others, to start, with 

' Pr'ythee, see there ! Behold ! — look ! lo 
If I stand here, I saw him ! ' 

"Their eyeballs were seared (was it not so, Sir?) who 
had thought to shield themselves by concealing their own hand, 
and laying the imputation of the crime on a low and hireling 
agency in wickedness ; who had vainly attempted to stifle the 
workings of their own coward conscience by ejaculating 
through white lips and chattering teeth, ' Thou canst not say 
I did it ! ' I have misread the great poet if those who had 
no way partaken in the deed of the death, either found that 
they were, or feared that they should be, pushed from their 
stools by the ghost of the slain, or exclaimed to a spectre 
created by their own fears and their own remorse, ' Avaunt ! 
and quit our sight !' " 

Webster then very unexpectedly turned the story of 
Banquo against the South, and with a forecast of the 
events of the next forty years tliat was quite remarkable. 

" There is another particular in which the honorable 
member's quick perception of resemblances might, I should 
think, have seen something in the story of Banquo, making it 
not altogether a subject of the most pleasant contemplation. 
Those who murdered Banquo. what did they win by it? Sub- 
stantial good? Permanent power? Or disappointment, rather, 
and sore mortification; dust and ashes, the common fate of 
vaulting ambition overleaping itself? Did not even-handed 

263 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

justice ere long commend the poisoned chalice to their own 
lips? Did they not soon find that for another they had filed 
their mind? That ambition, though apparently for the moment 
successful, had but put a barren sceptre in their grasp? Ay, sir. 

' a barren sceptre in their gripe 
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand 
No son of theirs succeeding.' 

" Sir, I need pursue the allusion no farther. I leave the 
honorable gentleman to run it out at his leisure, and to derive 
from it all the gratification it is calculated to administer. If 
he finds himself pleased with the associations, and prepared to 
be quite satisfied, though the parallel should be entirely com- 
pleted, I had almost said, I am satisfied also ; but this I 
shall think of, yes, sir, I will think of that." 

The meaning here was that although the South had 
succeeded in murdering friendliness between the North- 
east and the West, yet the South would gain nothing 
from it in the end. They would not win permanent 
power ; the West would hot in the end go all the way 
with them in their extreme plans of nullification and 
secession. This warning was literally fulfilled. The 
South secured the assistance of the West in abolishing 
the tariff for a time, and in protecting slavery ; but 
in the end, the West deserted the South ; the tariff was 
restored, slavery abolished, and nullification and seces- 
sion completely discredited. 

One of the most tiresome notions of that time was 
that a statesman must remain perfectly consistent from 
childhood to old age and never change his opinions. It 
was absolutely silly, because all men and communities, 
if not entirely stupid, change their minds. But dignified 
Senators were constantly attacking one another on this 
ground, and a large part of Hayne's speech was made 
up of this sort of catch-penny stump oratory. One of 
the most effective parts of Webster's reply was that in 
which he showed that South Carolina had passed 
through changes of opinion ; had voted for internal im- 
provements which she now opposed, and voted for the 
protective tariff* which she now opposed by threatening 

264 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

to destroy the Union. She had voted for the protec- 
tive tariff of 1816 which was to promote the interests 
of manufacturers of southern cotton to the injury of 
the Calcutta cotton trade, which brought profits to 
New England ship-owners. 

" Yes Sir, I pursued in all this a South Carolina track on 
the doctrines of internal improvement. South Carolina, as she 
was then represented in the other house, set forth in 1816 under 

, a fresh and leading breeze, and I was among the followers. 

! But if my leader sees new lights and turns a sharp corner, 
unless I see new lights also, I keep straight on in the same 
path. I repeat, that leading gentlemen from South Carolina 
were first and foremost in behalf of the doctrines of internal 
improvements, when those doctrines came first to be considered 
and acted upon in Congress. The debate on the bank ques- 

! tion, on the tariff of 1816, and on the direct tax, will show who 

1 was who, and what was what, at that time." 

"The tarifif of 1816 (one of the plain cases of oppression 
and usurpation, from which, if the government does not recede, 
individual States may justly secede from the government), is, 

: Sir, in truth, a South Carolina tariff, supported by South 
Carolina votes. But for those votes, it could not have passed 
in the form in which it did pass ; whereas, if it had depended 
on Massachusetts votes, it would have been lost." 

I This was a hard hit ; and both Hayne and Calhoun 
labored for years to explain it away by saying that Caro- 

I lina had voted for the tariff in 1816 because in some 
respects it reduced the duties. But it w'as an avowed 
protective tariff all the same ; and in the appendix to his 
speech as printed, Webster quoted passages from Cal- 
houn's speeches defending the tariff of 18 16 as a pro- 
tection and encouragement to infant industries. 

Webster defended New England by connecting in a 
most striking way the doctrine of internal improve- 
ments with the most enlightened and lofty union senti- 
ment ; and it was the wonderful union sentiment in this 
speech that has given it distinction and permanent value. 
If it had been merely an answer to " local hits " and 
charges of inconsistency neither it nor Hayne would 
have been so much heard of. 

l|i 26s 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

" 'What interest,' asks he, ' has South CaroHna in a canal 
in Ohio?' Sir, this very question is full of significance. It 
develops the gentleman's whole political system, and its answer 
expounds mine. Here we differ. I look upon a road over the 
Alleghanies, a canal round the falls of the Ohio, or a canal or 
railway from the Atlantic to the Western waters, as being an 
object large and extensive enough to be fairly said to be for 
the common benefit. The gentleman thinks otherwise, and this 
is the key to his construction of the powers of the government. 
He may well ask what interest has South Carolina in a canal in 
Ohio. On his system, it is true, she has no interest. On that 
system, Ohio and Carolina are different governments, and 
dift'erent countries ; connected here, it is true, by some slight 
and ill-defined bond of union, but in all main respects separate 
and diverse. On that system, Carolina has ho more interest 
in a canal in Ohio than in Mexico. The gentleman, therefore, 
only follows out his own principles ; he does no more than 
arrive at the natural conclusions of his own doctrines ; he only 
announces the true result of that creed which he has adopted 
himself, and would persuade others to adopt, when he thus 
declares that South Carolina has no interest in a public work 
in Ohio." 

" Sir, we narrow-minded people of New England do not 
reason thus. Our notion of things is entirely different. We 
look upon the States, not as separated, but as united. We love 
to dwell on that union, and on the mutual happiness which it 
has so much promoted, and the common renown which it has 
so greatly contributed to acquire. . . . 

" Sir, if a railroad or canal beginning in South Carolina 
and ending in South Carolina appeared to me to be of national 
importance and national magnitude, believing, as I do, that 
the power of government extends to the encouragement of 
works of that description, if I were to stand up here and ask. 
What interest has Massachusetts in a railroad in South Caro- 
lina? I should not be willing to face my constituents. These 
same narrow-minded men would tell me. that they had sent 
me to act for the whole country, and that one who possessed 
too little comprehension, either of intellect or feeling, one who 
was not large enough, both in mind and in heart, to embrace 
the whole, was not fit to be intrusted with the interest of 
any part." 

That was one of the finest passag'es of the reply, 
has been read with dehght by millions, and has been 
quoted hundreds of times. 

Webster defended New England from Hayne's 

266 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

charge of sectionalism and disunion sentiment in 1812 
by the defence already given, the only one that could 
be given, namely, that New England had changed her 
mind and repented, and that her sin of disunion in 1812 
was no excuse for South Carolina's disimion of 1830. 

" New England has, at times, so argues the gentleman, 
held opinions as dangerous as those which he now holds. 
Suppose this were so; why should he therefore abuse New 
England? If he finds himself countenanced by acts of hers, 
how is it that, while he relies on these facts, he covers, or seeks 
to cover, their authors with reproach? ... 

" It is enough for me to say, that if, in any part of their 
grateful occupation, if, in all their researches, they find any- 
thing in the history of Massachusetts, or New England, or in 
the proceedings of any legislative or other public body, disloyal 
to the Union, speaking slightingly of its value, proposing to 
break it up, or recommending non-intercourse with neighboring 
States, on account of difference of political opinion, then, Sir, 
I give them all up to the honorable gentleman's unrestrained 
rebuke; expecting, however, that he will extend his bufifetings 
in like manner to all similar proceedings, wherever else found." 

Then came a famous passage which has stirred the 
whole country ever since; and it is said to have been 
delivered as he glanced at a group of Massachusetts 
people in the audience. 

" Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Mas- 
sachusetts ; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and 
judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows 
it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, 
and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they 
will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the 
great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the 
soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there 
they will lie forever. And, Sir, where American Liberty 
raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and 
sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood 
and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall 
wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and 
tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and 
necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that 
Union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, 
in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was 

267 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

rocked ; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it 
may still retain over the friends who gather round it ; and it 
will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments 
of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin." 

The ground being now cleared of the rubbish of sup- 
posed inconsistencies and personalities, Webster ad- 
dressed himself to South Carolina's legal argument for 
nullification and secession. He began in a very neat 
way by showing that when Massachusetts had believed 
the embargo law unconstitutional and had talked about 
disunion she did not undertake to say that she, as a 
State, would nullify that law. In spite of all her com- 
plaints, all her disunion sentiment, she nevertheless ad- 
mitted that only the Supreme Court of the United 
States could decide the question of the constitutionality 
of the embargo. To the Supreme Court she took the 
question, and when it decided against her and in favor 
of the embargo law she accepted the situation and all 
disunion sentiment became mere history. 

That was the exact opposite of the South Carolina 
method based on the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. 
According to Hayne and South Carolina the general 
government was the creature of each of the States 
severally, so that each could construe its acts and accept 
or reject them. The government was the servant of 
four and twenty masters, of different wills and dif- 
ferent purposes, and yet bound to obey them all. Web- 
ster went on to show the impossible condition that 
would result from each State construing the Constitution 
in its own way. 

" The tariff is a usurpation ; it is a dangerous usurpation ; 
it is a palpable usurpation ; it is a deliberate usurpation. It is 
such a usurpation, therefore, as calls upon the States to 
exercise their right of interference. Here is a case then within 
the gentleman's principles, and all his qualifications of his 
principles. It is a case for action. The Constitution is plainly, 
dangerously, palpably and deliberately violated, and the States 
must interpose their own authority to arrest the law. Let us 
suppose the State of South Carolina to express this same 

268 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

opinion, bj^ the voice of her legislature. That would be very 
imposing; but what then? Is the voice of one State con- 
clusive? It so happens that, at the very moment when South 
Carolina resolves that the tariff laws are unconstitutional, 
Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve exactly the reverse. They 
hold these laws to be highly proper and strictly constitutional." 
"What is to be done? Are these States both right? Is 
he bound to consider them both right? If not, which is in the 
wrong? or rather, which has the better right to decide? And 
if he and I are not to know what the Constitution means, and 
what it is, till those two State legislatures, and the twenty-two 
others, shall agree in its construction, what have we sworn to 
when we have sworn to maintain it ? " 

The vice in the argument of the Virginia and Ken- 
tucky resolutions was, that while they laid down as 
foundation principles that the government was the mere 
creature or agent of the States, they showed no way by 
which the States could agree as to the manner of con- 
trolling the agent. Webster laid down and proved the 
now generally accepted doctrine that the general gov- 
ernment was not created by the States, but by the 
people; and the people had also created the State gov- 
ernments. The people were the sole creators and 
masters of the whole situation. Constitutional ques- 
tions, violations of the Constitution, were to be settled 
by the people through frequent elections, by the decisions 
of the Supreme Court, and by the power to alter and 
amend the Constitution provided in the instrument itself. 

i Beyond that there was nothing but revolution and the 
sword. 

This was the most powerful and complete argument 

|. that had thus far ever been stated in either court or 
forum against nullification and secession. It is the part 
of the reply which lawyers and statesmen value more 
than any other. Its technical details finished, Webster 
turned again to union sentiment, and gently led his 
hearers to that famous peroration which closed the 

, Reply to Havne. 

II 

" I have not allowed myself. Sir, to look beyond the 

Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. 

269 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty 
when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. 
I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of 
disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the 
depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe 
counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts 
should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may 
be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of 
the people when it should be broken up and destroyed. While 
the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects 
spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I 
seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at 
least, that curtain may not rise ! God grant that on my vision 
never may be opened what lies behind ! When my eyes shall 
be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may 
I not see him shining on the broken, dishonored fragments of a 
once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, bellig- 
erent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, 
in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance 
rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known 
and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its 
arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a 
stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing 
for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as ' Wliat is all 
this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 
' Liberty first and Union afterwards ' ; but everywhere, spread 
all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample 
folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every 
wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to 
every true American heart, — Liberty and Union, now and for 
ever, one and inseparable ! " 

Hayne immediately replied at considerable length to 
Webster. It was late in the afternoon, and not being 
able to say all he wished on the constitutional question, 
the omitted arguments were afterwards added in his 
printed speech. The first part of his reply contained 
nothing of much importance. Webster's speech had 
shown so clearly the uselessness of charges of incon- 
sistency and change of mind, when every one of any 
sense was guilty of them, that Hayne accepted the 
situation and spent much time showing that his own 
changes of mind on the tariff and internal improvements 
had been proper ones. The charge that South Carolina 

270 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

was adopting the doctrines of the Hartford Convention 
he could answer only by saying she was using them in 
a time of peace and for a peaceful purpose. She would 
not use them as New England had done when the coun- 
try was at war. " We Carolinians," said Hayne, " would 
not take advantage of the difficulties created by a 
foreign war to wring from the Federal government a 
redress even of our grievances. We would first fly to 
the defence of the country, and after that demand our 
constitutional rights," 

In fact, Hayne was driven so far from most of his 
positions that his last speech was largely an attempt to 
show that South Carolina's nullification theories were 
really methods of saving the Union and that he was 
more of a union man than Webster. 

He strove hard to restore the doctrines of the Vir- 
ginia and Kentucky resolutions. He did this by ex- 
plaining the theory on which they were supposed to rest, 
namely, that the Constitution was a compact between the 
States ; that the States came together and formed this 
compact. But he could not stop there and say that the 
States were the only parties to it, because the answer 
would be tliat the Constitution, being the written evi- 
dence of the compact of the States, contained several 
clauses not only restricting State action, but providing 
that Acts of Congress should be the law of the land 
and that the Supreme Court should decide all ques- 
tions arising under that law of the land. This answer 
would again deliver him into Webster's hands. So he 
went a step farther and said that there w-as another 
party to the compact, namely, the general government 
itself, created by the compact ; that is to say, the States 
came together and made a compact or contract creating 
a general government, and then this general government 
immediately became another party to the compact. 

The parties to the compact thus being the States and 
the general government, it could not be supposed that 
one of those parties, namely, the general government, 

271 



i 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

had the sole authority to interpret the terms of the com- 
pact. Each party must be the judge and interpreter, 
because all were equal and there was no superior. 

No difficulty would be experienced with this method, 
he said. There would be no armed collision between 
the State and Federal government ; no treason, no re- 
bellion. A State having formally declared certain legis- 
lation of Congress unconstitutional the burden would 
then be upon Congress to ask, in the manner provided, 
for an amendment to the Constitution giving it the 
power the State had denied. The Constitution provided 
that it could be amended by vote of three-fourths of the 
States. This was the only way in which the compact 
could be changed ; and to this amending power, that is 
to three-fourths of the States, must the appeal be made 
when a State and the Congress came in conflict. It was 
a perfectly peaceful method. If the Congress obtained, 
the amendment then it would have the power it wanted ; 
if not, then it must rest content. 

Why, he asks, should not each sovereign State have 
this right of decision as well as the Supreme Court at 
Washington ? The court can decide only the cases that 
arise in litigation involving Acts of Congress. It can- 
not decide great questions of sovereignty like the tariff 
and internal improvements. These sovereign questions 
should be left to the decision of the sovereign States, 

It was certainly a most magnificent plan for State 
rights. Any one State might deny, nullify and declare 
unconstitutional any congressional legislation, even 
legislation involving the most ordinary and expressly j 
given powers of Congress. The burden would then be 
on Congress to obtain justification from three-fourths 
of the States or abandon its legislation as regards the 
objecting State, The Constitution would have to be 
amended every time one State chose to protest. While 
the long process of amendment was being gone through , 
the law would not be enforced at all ; or would be ' 
enforced in most of the States and unenforced in one. 

272 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

The tariff, for example, might be enforced in the ports 
of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and goods 
come in free at Charleston. Truly the Union would be, 
as Webster said, a rope of sand. The conditions would 
be the same as they were under the old Articles of Con- 
federation upon which the Constitution was intended 
to be an improvement. 

All Hayne's reasoning, every new process he started, 
simply led round and round in the same circle; round 
again to the rope of sand and the old Articles of Confed- 
eration. He argued that if the general government 
transgressed, each State had a right to check it by nulli- 
fying the offending law. But if all the parties to the 
compact were, as he said, sovereigns and equals, then 
the general government, being a sovereign equal, had 
a right to check a State. So the compact would be 
merely a league of sovereigns like the old Articles of 
Confederation. 

In fact, in one part of his speech, he had said that 
the States were like nations. There would be no diffi- 
culty when one of them was brought into collision with 
the general government on a constitutional question. 
It would simply be a common case of difference of opin- 
ion between sovereigns as to the true construction of a 
compact. " Does such a difference of opinion necessa- 
rily produce war ? No. And if not among rival nations, 
why should it do so among friendly States? " 

He did not seem to realize that he had argued the 
Constitution completely out of existence and had gone 
back to the old Articles of Confederation. In the be- 
ginning of his argument it had suited his purpose to 
make the general government a party to the contract 
and a sovereign ; but in the end it was the States that 
had the sole right to check and nullify ; and the sover- 
eign party called the general government could only 
yield. 

But it was all, he assures us, a plan to preserv^e the 
Union. This devotion to the Union was a common 
i8 273 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

accompaniment of nullification arguments, sometimes as 
a preface, sometimes as a peroration. The ordinances 
of secession dissolving the connection with the Union 
passed by the southern States in the Civil War were 
in several instances preceded by expressions of the 
greatest devotion to the Union and followed by expres- 
sions of the greatest regret at parting from it. 

But the Great Debate was by no means finished. 
Webster replied again, addressing himself to the new 
phase of the nullification argument which Hayne had 
attempted. He had no difficulty in destroying it ; for 
Hayne had ruined his own argument by saying that the 
general government was one of the parties to the 
compact. 

" For the purpose of erecting the Constitution on the basis 
of a compact, the gentleman considers the States as parties to 
that compact ; but as soon as his compact is made, then he 
chooses to consider the General Government, which is the 
offspring of that compact, not its offspring, but one of its 
parties; and so, being a party, has not the power of judging 
on the terms of compact. Pray, Sir, in what school is such 
reasoning as this taught?" . . . 

" For the same reason, Sir, if I were now to concede to 
the gentleman his principal propositions, viz., that the Constitu- 
tion is a compact between States, the question would still be, 
what provision is made in this compact to settle points of 
disputed or contested power, that shall come into controversy? 
And this question would still be answered, and conclusively 
answered, by the Constitution itself. . . . The Constitution 
declares that the laws of Congress shall be the supreme laws 
of the land. No construction is necessary here. It declares 
also with equal plainness and precision that the judicial power 
of the United States shall extend to every case arising under 
the laws of Congress." 

This was bringing the question back to the words • 
of the Constitution. The nullification argument was 
always flying from the words and arguing on supposi- 
tion and general or metaphysical principles. 

" The gentleman says, if there be such a power of final 
decision in the General Government, he asks for the grant of 
that power. Well, Sir, I show him the grant — I turn him to 

274 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

the very words — I show him that the laws of Congress are 
made supreme; and that the judicial power extends, by express 
words, to the interpretation of these laws. Instead of an- 
swering this he retreats into the general reflection, that it 
must result, from the nature of things, that the States being 
parties must judge for themselves." 

In other words, Hayne had felt obliged to show that 
the government was a mere party to a compact and not 
a government, because if he once admitted it to be a 
government, the words of the Constitution endowed it 
with powers of final decision and made it obviously a 
stronger government than he would like to have it. 

But the Constitution was not a compact. It did not 
describe itself as a compact made by the States. In its 
opening paragraph it declares that it is ordained and 
established by the people of the United States. It does 
not even say that it is established by the people of the 
several States, but it declares that it is established by 
the people of the United States in the aggregate. It 
does not call itself a compact, but a constitution, which 
is quite a different thing from a compact. 

Webster was already a very prominent and distin- 
guished man, but for some years after these replies to 
Hayne his popularity throughout the North and West 
and among Whigs and union-loving people in the South 
seemed to become boundless. The second reply is said 
to have been more extensively read within the six 
months following its delivery than any other speech that 
had been made in Congress since the establishment of 
the government. It was reprinted in newspapers all 
over the country, and when that failed to satisfy the de- 
mand thousands of pamphlet copies were circulated. 
The majority of our people were, as they have always 
been, on the side of nationality and union ; and from 
innumerable sources letters of congratulation, admira- 
tion and gratitude poured in upon Webster. It has 
been given to few, if to any other man, in history, 
I to create such a situation and to triumph in such an 
epoch-making crisis by the mere delivery of two or three 

275 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

speeches in debate. The oratory', the eloquence, the 
wide sympathy, knowledge and experience, the romantic 
and picturesque imagination, the classic and simple taste 
and literary genius had elevated and dignified the whole i 
subject and had given it a place in the intellect and ' 
hearts of Americans that it had never occupied before. 
Thirty years afterwards millions of northerners laid 
down their lives for the principles, the purposes and 
the sentiment of the Reply to Hayne. 

Webster had performed his task; but the Great De- 
bate on Foot's Resolution rolled on for the rest of 
January, for February and March. During April and 
most of May other subjects were taken up. But for a 
few days near the end of May the discussion was raised 
again and closed May 22d. In those periods the resolu- 
tion was called up almost every day, and with most 
infinite variety of point of view and argument the 
Senators beat over the whole history of the country, . 
internal improvements, Hartford Convention, tariff, 
slavery, nullification and secession, refought the War 
of 1812 and the Revolution. They restated the consti- 
tutional arguments of Webster and Hayne often with 
new and enlightening illustrations, and reanalyzed, re- 
drafted, or tore to pieces the Constitution. Senators 
would sometimes begin their remarks with humorous 
statements of the situation ; usually to the effect that , 
they hoped they would not be considered out of order 
if they occasionally referred to the resolution before the 
House. As Barton said, it was the Senate's saturnalia. 
It was a period of remarkable ability ; and it is commonly 
said that never before or since has the Senate con- 
tained such a high average of intellect and of indepen- 
dence. It was this condition which had roused Webster 
to such heights of reasoning and eloquence. He never 
could have delivered such speeches to an ordinary audi- 
ence. He was always very susceptible to his hearers: 
he always measured his effort by them ; and in the 
Senate he knew that his utmost effort would be appre- 

276 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

dated. He gave it and there was no disappointment. 
He was unexpectedly rewarded by the appreciation 
of the whole country. 

As this remarkable debate continued the point of 
order was raised one day, possibly as a joke, that nearly 
the whole thing was irrelevant to the resolution before 
the House. But it was useless to try to stop such high- 
strung Senators, They were men of ideas, full of the 
learning of lawyers, of the reading of history, of the 
experience and studies of lifetimes ; they were glorying 
in their opportunity ; and the chairman, no doubt with 
a smile, overruled the well-taken point of order. 

Benton had followed Webster in a speech lasting 
three days, in which he continued his onslaught on the 
; Northeast and his wooing of the South. He attacked 
internal improvements, because not enough money had 
been spent on them in the West and most of the money 
had been spent in the East; and he made the money 
spent in the West seem small by leaving out of the 
count the money spent in Ohio. He attacked the Cum- 
berland road because it was not yet completed and did 
not reach distant parts of the West. It reached only 
Ohio, which for his purposes he chose to consider as part 
of the Northeast. Ohio was the only really prosperous 
part of the West in those days. More money had been 
spent on it for internal improvements because there were 
more people there and more reason for the improve- 
ments. 

Benton was a vast talker, the most long-winded of 
■Senators, hardly a grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff. 
He actually went so far towards the verge of silliness 
as to complain of the appropriations for navy yard, 
fortifications and lighthouses as an injury to the West, 
because they were for the exclusive benefit of the Atlan- 
tic coast. Finally, he let the cat out of the bag, and 
showed his arrant sectionalism by announcing that the 
iWest wanted no communication with the East whatever, 
no canals or roads across the Alleghanies. " Every canal 

277 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and every road," he said, " tending to draw the com- 
merce of the western States across the Alleghany Moun- 
tains is an injury to the people of the West. They 
nmst trade with New Orleans alone and make that their 
great city." ' 

The puerility of his ideas was perhaps the reason 
why Webster always ignored him and thought it not 
worth while to reply to arguments which were their 
own refutation. Other Senators disposed of him. 
Sprague, of Maine, in one of the best speeches of the . 
debate, tore Benton's historical illustrations to tatters. 
A few days later, Sprague's colleague, Senatori 
Holmes, of the Dartmouth College case, continued the: 
service, leaving Benton not even a crutch to stand upon. 
These two speeches in point of historical research and 
detail were more valuable than Webster's ; but, of 
course, not capable of the same circulation and popu- 
larity. Sprague was a Democrat, of Benton's own 
party, but had declined to accept Jackson. In fact, 
Benton was so extreme, so inaccurate and so impolitic 
in his attacks upon the North, that he aroused sec- 
tionalism more than even Democrats and nullifiers 
thought necessary. Several of his own party turned 
against him ; and his own colleague, Barton from Mis- 
souri, denounced him for having lighted the flame " oi 
sectional prejudice, local animosity and civil discord.' 
There was a party in the West, Barton said, that callec; 
the East a cruel stepmother ; but he did not belong to it 
and in his opinion " the Government of the Unior 
has been kind, parental and indulgent to the West.' 
Curiously enough, Hayne's colleague said the same thinj 
and denied Hayne's statements that the West had beei 
ill-treated by the Northeast. 

This was brought out more and more in the debat 
as details were disclosed. Holmes called attention t 
the act of March 2, 1821, by which the governmen 

* Gales and Seaton's Debates, vol. vi, p. 115. 

278 



i 



THE REPLY TO HAYNE 

released $9,000,000 to western debtors under the old 
credit system. Every sixteenth section of public land 
was given for school purposes, five per cent, of the sales 
of lands was used for western roads, lands were given 
for colleges, money forfeited for non-compliance with 
conditions of sales had been returned, special favor had 
been shown Missouri, the government maintained a mili- 
tary force there for escorting the State's Mexican 
traders through the desert. 

In March Senator Johnston, of Louisiana, delivered 
an excellent speech in which he placed Benton and the 
whole attack upon the North in their true light. " I 
am a western man," he said, " and the advocate of west- 
ern interests ; '* and he charged Benton with endeavoring 
to build up a party in the West hostile to New England 
and the Middle States. He denied Benton's right to 
speak in the name of the whole West. Benton, he said, 
was injuring his own cause and the cause of the West. 

'*What is the great interest of the Western States at this 
moment? To obtain some modification of the land system 
more favorable to the settlement of the West. And how does 
he propose to accomplish this object? By assailing the whole 
North, by charging them with systematic hostility to the West 
for more than forty years. He has ransacked the archives, 
collected every fact, arrayed every charge, and presented them 
imder the highest coloring, to prove what can only exist in 
his imagination— a settled policy, steadily pursued on the part 
of the North to stifle the birth and cripple the growth of the 
West, until he has driven every member, from a sense of pride, 
into an opposition to every scheme he may recommend." 
(Gales and Seaton's Debates, vol. vi, p. 277.) 

At the very close of the debate Benton got in an- 
other speech, in which he tried in vain to restore some 
of his shattered historical illustrations, assailed Web- 
ster, and frantically declared that after all it was the 
South and not the North that was the true friend of the 
West. 

The final result was that Webster's motion to post- 
pone indefinitely the Foot resolution was carried out in 

279 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

a somewhat different form by laying the resolution on 
the table.* Benton's graduation bill was amended, the 
part giving the land away after five years cut out, so that 
the bill merely made three prices for the public land : 
one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre for new land, 
one dollar for lands on the market for three years with- 
out sale, and seventy-five cents for such lands to actual 
settlers. In this form the bill was passed by the south- 
ern and western Senators, outvoting the Northeast ; but 
the bill failed in the House of Representatives and 
never became a law.^ 

There is said to have been considerable demand 
throughout the country for the speeches of very nearly 
all the Senators who spoke at any length. This de- 
mand, no doubt, kept the debate going and roused the 
ambition of the Senators. The people felt that they 
were being educated ; and to read through the debate 
to-day is a liberal education. But of all the speeches 
none are now remembered or known except two, 
Hayne's and Webster's ; and of these Webster's is the 
only one that is still read. Most people, even biogra- 
phers of the two men, seem to know of Hayne's speech 
only through what Webster said of it. 

It is a most striking illustration of literary genius, 
the divine gift, the power of him who speaks winged 
words, as Homer would say ; and Kipling has illustrated 
it in the prehistoric fable of the tribe who, finding one of 
their number, who could speak these words that " lived 
and walked about," killed him as too dangerous to safe 
mediocrity. 

* Journal of the Senate, ist Session 21st Congress, p. 316. 

''Gales and Seaton's Debates, ist Sess. 21st Congress, vol. 
vi, pp. 426, 427; House Journal, ist Sess. 21st Congress, p. 700; 
Journal of Senate, ist Sess. 21st Congress, pp. 291, 292. 



280 



XI 

THE WHITE MURDER TRIAL JACKSONIAN POLITICS — 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES — MARSHFIELD 

Webster's heavy labors in the Supreme Court and 
the Senate and the thunders of applause for his speeches 
on nullification were still at their height when we catch 
a glimpse of this many-sided man indulging himself 
in one of his favorite tastes as if he were a person of 
elegant leisure and nothing particular had happened. 
He was reading Moore's " Life of Byron," and wonder- 
ing how he could get a copy of Dr. Johnson's edition of 
Shakespeare. 

Farming, sport and his studies in literature must 
have always occupied a large part of his waking 
thoughts. Ver)- likely this was the food by which his 
mind really lived and which gave him freshness to per- 
form such Herculean efforts of intellect. 

In that summer of 1830 following the Reply to 
Hayne, he took part as counsel for the prosecution in the 
White murder trial in Salem, Alassachusetts, in which 
he made a speech, passages of which are certainly equal 
to anything in the Reply to Hayne, and, in the opinion 
of some, superior. He was in wonderful form for 
eloquence during that year 1830. 

Joseph White, a wealthy merchant, eighty-two years 
old, had been found murdered in his bed one morning 
in Salem, with thirteen stabs and a blow, as of a club, 
on the head. It was a murder which would now, in 
our time of almost universal homicide and only two 
per cent, of convictions, attract only passing attention ; 
but in that day of comparative freedom from such 
crimes it created an excitement which we can hardly 
understand. The people of the town were so astounded 
at such an event that for days carpenters and smiths 

281 



I 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

could be heard along all the streets putting bolts and 
fastenings to doors and windows. " Many for defence 
furnished themselves with cutlasses, firearms and watch 
dogs." ^ A vigilance committee was appointed and 
the Legislature ordered a special session of the Supreme 
Court to try the persons suspected. 

The curious circumstances of the discovery of the 
murderers and the details of the trial cannot be given 
space in this volume. One of the most striking passages 
from Webster's speech has already been quoted in Chap- I 
ter IL Nor can we go deeply into the question whether 
or not he received a fee from the family of the mur- j 
dered man to assist the prosecution. Such fees were 
forbidden by statute. Webster's assistance had been 
asked by the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, 
who were advanced in years. When the question was 
raised in the course of the trial Webster told the court 
that he had received no fee in that trial and expected 
none. Apparently he was neither offered nor promised 
any fee in any of the trials of the different defendants ; 
but after the trial of one of them, the principal, he ap- 
pears, according to the biography by his literary execu- 
tor, Mr. Curtis, to have accepted a fee from the family 
of the murdered man. The trials were a great excite- 
ment of the day, passages froiu' Webster's speeches to 
the jury have been reprinted and quoted innumerable 
times, and added greatly to his reputation, which, indeed, 
was in one sense all made in this year 1830. It was 
certainly raised to a most unexpected height. 

From the remotest corners of the Union came let- 
ters of admiration, requests from every kind of organ- 
ization, from fishing clubs up to Bible societies, desiring 
to enroll him among their honorary members. His say- 
ings and doings were becoming household words ; in- 
numerable anecdotes of his eloquence, his legal victories: 
and his powerful character were circulating far and 



' Works, Edition of 1851, vol. vi, p. 42. 

282 



JACKSONIAN POLITICS 

wide; almost every child knew his opinions and prin- 
ciples ; there was no man in the country, not even Jack- 
son or Clay, who was any better known ; and those two 
remarkable men, though more popular perhaps in the 
ordinary sense among the masses, failed to arouse the 
admiration and wonder which Webster's high talents 
and genius drew from even his opponents. All this 
overwhelming distinction pointed one way, and many 
of the letters he received frankly informed him that he 
must become the candidate for the Presidency against 
General Jackson when that popular idol went before 
tlie public for a second term. 

The Jacksonian methods as well as the methods of 
the nullifiers had destroyed the era of good feeling, and 
political parties were forming again and looking about 
for leaders and candidates. The old Democratic party, 
Republican as it had called itself, the only party in 
existence during the era of good feeling, was now 
split into two divisions. One division was following 
the Jacksonian personality and leadership and the nulli- 
fication and State sovereignty ideas of Calhoun, and the 
other was following the ideas of Webster and Clay on 
protective tariff, internal improvements and strong 
nationality and Republicanism as opposed to mere 
Democracy. The first division had now accepted the 
name of Democrats instead of Republican. The second 
division had given themselves the name of National Re- 
publicans and gathered to their fold the people like 
Webster, who many years before had been Federalists. 
They were, in fact, the legitimate successors of the 
Federalists. Later they were called Whigs, and at the 
outbreak of the Civil War were succeeded by what is 
still known as the Union Republican party. 

Webster and Clay's party, the National Republican, 
was founded on the protective tariff, internal improve- 
ments, the Bank of the United States, and, of course, 
the integrity of the Union and opposition to nullifica- 
tion. Jackson and the Democrats opposed all these 

283 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

except that Jackson himself and some of his party were 
Union men and enemies of the southern nulHfiers. But 
Jackson's opposition to nuhification seemed to arise 
more from his imperious temper than from any behef 
that nuhification was a constitutional error. He be- 
lieved himself to be the government, and he would 
brook no attack which was so obviously an overthrow 
of his own power. He regarded the national govern- 
ment as a pure democracy rather than as a republic of 
checks and balances and fixed departments. He be- 
lieved himself to have been elected by the great Demo- 
cratic majority for the purpose of sweeping everything 
before him and turning everything his way and their 
way while his four years of power lasted. He de- 
nounced nullification because it did not suit him ; but 
when the Supreme Court made a decision that did not 
suit him, as in the dispute between Georgia and the 
Cherokee Indians, he refused to allow the decision to be 
executed, and openly set the court and its judgment at 
defiance. He recognized no final arbiter of what the 
Constitution meant except himself. 

Henry Clay's popularity and claims to a nomination 
at the hands of the National Republicans were about as 
strong as Webster's. Both men regarded the nomina- 
tion as a very distinguished honor; but would do noth- 
ing to interfere with each other. The National Re- 
publican nominating convention was to meet in Balti- 
more. But as time approached a curious disturbance 
of the political situation arose from the appearance of 
a third party, the anti-Masons, one of the most curious 
freaks of our history. A certain person named Morgan, 
who had been a Free Mason and had withdrawn from 
the society, was believed to have been abducted and mur- 
dered in 1826 at Batavia, New York, to prevent his 
reveahng the secrets of the order. It is now generally 
believed that there was no truth in the story of his 
murder ; but for several years after 1826, increasing 
numbers of people put full faith in it. A belief gained 

284 



JACKSONIAN POLITICS 

ground that the Masonic order was a danger to society 
and to American government; and soon this belief be- 
came the foundation of a poHtical party that was strong 
enough in 1831 to decide to nominate candidates of its 
own for the Presidency. 

These anti-Masons seemed to draw their recruits 
very largely from the ranks of the National Republi- 
cans, and they threatened to upset all calculations of the 
friends of Webster as well as of the friends of Clay. 
Webster was not a Mason and rather opposed to secret 
societies. Clay was a Mason, an "adhering Mason," 
in the slang of the time, because in spite of the supposed 
revelations he refused tO' renounce Masonry and with- 
draw from his lodge. 

Clay's possibilities of election being thus weakened 
and the anti-Masons inclining to nominate Mr. Wirt, as 
their own candidate, it was suggested to Webster that 
he discourage the nomination of Mr. Clay and at the 
same time remind the anti-Mason leaders that no one 
but himself had any chance of being elected against 
General Jackson. He would, in this way, it was urged, 
probably secure the nomination of both the anti-Masons 
and of the National Republicans, a combination which 
would have excellent chances of success against Jack- 
son's party. But Webster declined. He believed in 
the principles of the National Republican party. He 
would not be a candidate on the platform of any other 
party. He would not mix up the principles of the 
National Republicans with the proscriptions and tem- 
porary narrowness of the anti-Masons. He would not 
for the sake of winning half a victory for the National 
Republicans or a whole victory for himself consent to 
the offering of such concessions to the anti-Masons as 
would enable them to dictate the candidate for the whole 
opposition and reduce the contest to their own level. 

He had been for some time contemplating a trip to 
the western States. He had many pressing invitations ; 
and it would have been a triumphal progress of speech- 

285 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

making and entertainment. But it would be, in effect, 
an invasion of Clay's region; it would be construed as 
a move against him; and though anticipating much pleas- 
ure and information from such an excursion, Webster 
gave it up. He took the ground that even if Air. Clay 
had been weakened as a candidate for the Presidency 
by the anti-Mason defection, he had, nevertheless, a 
large and devoted following all over the country who 
would be much disturbed and might break up the newly- 
formed National Republican party if it failed to nomi- 
nate him. That party must at all hazards be preserved 
as the only one competent to oppose the Jacksonian 
heresies. 

The National Republican convention which met in 
Baltimore in the summer of 1831 nominated Mr. Clay 
for President and Mr. John Sargeant, of Philadelphia, 
for Vice-President. The anti-Masons nominated Mr. 
William Wirt; and both Republican and anti-Mason 
candidates were overwhelmingly defeated in the election 
of 1832 by the Jacksonian Democrats. " Old Hickory " 
was again President, with his apt pupil and friend, 
Martin Van Buren, for Vice-President. 

In this year 1831 the agitation in the North against 
the negro slavery in the southern States may be said to 
have begun. William Lloyd Garrison, a Boston news- 
paper editor, began his crusade in this year, and the 
Anti-Slavery Society was formed. He and his followers 
were soon given the name Abolitionists ; other societies 
were organized ; and though not attracting very serious 
attention in 1831, the movement soon influenced the 
whole political thought of the time and deeply affected 
Webster's political career. 

lackson's reign of eight years was a period of re- 
markable development in the United States, and a time 
when many powerful elements of our modern civilization 
besides the anti-slavery movement got under way. In 
the beginning of Jackson's first term there were no 
railroads in America. At the end of his second 

286 



JACKSONIAN POLITICS 

term there were over 1500 miles in operation. The 
screw propeller was introduced on steamboats instead 
of the side wheel ; coal came into use on locomo- 
tives and steamboats in place of wood ; friction matches 
were invented ; public schools were adopted in almost 
every State; the normal school system for training 
teachers was begun ; and also the modem form of news- 
paper, cheap, of wide circulation, and intense activity 
in gathering news. 

Deeply grateful to President Jackson for his whole- 
souled condemnation of the nullifiers, Webster had 
always been somewhat loath to " break ground " against 
him ; but now, throughout this session of Congress, — 
from December, 1831. to July, 1832, — both Webster and 
his party, the National Republicans, were arrayed in 
opposition to the choleric old soldier President. 

Jackson was credited in the popular mind with 
much honesty and sincerity of purpose. But whether 
he was any more so than other Presidents or people may 
be questioned. He was tricky enough ; but managed to 
have his tricks, like the Clay " bargain and corruption," 
performed by others while he stood aloof as the innocent 
but daring and audacious hero of the people. His pic- 
turesque violence of speech and action was the foun- 
dation of his popularity : from this headlong violence 
the masses inferred that he must be honest ; and finding, 
much to his own surprise, that his supposed failing was 
a source of political power, the old fellow worked it 
to the utmost in all manner of poses. This violence had 
given him his first distinction in the frontier life of 
Tennessee, where, when a judge, he is said to have 
rushed from the court room and seized with his own 
hands a ruffian whom the sherifif hesitated to arrest. 
In Webster's visit with Ticknor to Monticello in 1824, 
Jefferson told him that Jackson, when a Senator, could 
never make a speech, because of the violence of his 
feelings. " I have seen him attempt it repeatedly," 
said Jefferson, " and choke with rage." 

287 



I 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Such a man, when President, naturally begot violence 
all about him. His dismissal of thousands of office- 
holders merely tO' reward his own followers was alone 
a large cause for indignation and resentment. But in 
addition to that he put violence intO' everything, small 
matters as well as great. He could not make the most 
trifling decision or suggestion without posing in an 
almost insane desire to crush and destroy every one 
that he suspected of opposing it. His opponents could 
be as violent in language as he, and there have conse- 
quently been few periods in our history when political 
discussion has been so acrimonious and vindictive. 

Of the three objects of Jackson's fury — the protec- 
tive tariff, internal improvements, and the United States 
Bank — the Bank received the largest share of his atten- 
tion. In the debates on continuing the existence of the 
United States Bank, Webster took a prominent position , 
against the administration. The Bank had been char- 
tered in 1816, and there had been a similar bank char- 
tered in 1 79 1, both of them regarded as an almost 
absolute necessity for a new country and a new gov- 
ernment. The government was growing rich, had vast 
sums to hold and disburse, but no place tO' keep this 
money except the pockets of officials or various private 
banks, of uncertain reliability, scattered over the country. 
How was the revenue to be collected through all the 
post offices, land offices and custom houses scattered 
over thousands of miles with inadequate communication ?j 
How, for example, was the money collected at the im^ 
portant custom house at New Orleans to reach Washn 
ington? How was the government at Washington to 
make a payment at New Orleans? 

A special corporation called the Bank of the United 
States was, therefore, created by Congress to be both 
a public institution for the deposit and disbursement of: 
the public money, and at the same time a private cor- 
poration for its own profit. By its branches all over: 
the country it would collect the public money from cus 

288 



BANK OF THE UNITED STATES 

torn houses, post offices, and land offices, and by these 
same branches make payments for the government in 
distant places in the far West and South. It was bound 
to transmit government funds from one place to an- 
other without expense; so that a dollar in New Hamp- 
shire or Maine would be a dollar at St. Louis or New 
Orleans. By issuing notes of a recognized value 
tliroughout the whole country the Bank would also 
tend to correct the very serious evil of a currency 
largely composed of the notes of State banks of varying 
value. We have so long been accustomed to a uniform 
currency all over the Union that we can now hardly 
appreciate the nuisance and absurdity of those State 
bank notes varying in value in different localities. Our 
modern business would be impossible under such a 
system. 

There were about four hundred of these State banks 
and the notes of each w^ere necessarily limited and local 
in their credit. They could not be used to send money 
or miake payment at any distance. It was a form of 
sectionalism which made a most serious problem for the 
people of that time. The United States Bank had 
I largely solved it because its notes of the same value 
everywhere could be used for making payments at a 
distance. In this w^ay the Bank was steadily relegating 
the State bank notes to the merest local uses. 

The Bank was intended also to serve the function 
of lending money to the government in time of need. 
All these functions were very important in the crude, 
in fact, barbaric condition of our finances in those early 
days ; and nowhere do we find this usefulness of the 
Bank so well and clearly set forth as in Webster's 
speeches. The charter of the Bank was for twenty 
years, and would expire in 1836. A bill to renew the 
charter was introduced in this session of 1832, so that 
if the Bank was not to be continued, four years would 
be given it to wind up its affairs. This gave Jackson 
the opportunity he had long desired, of destroying it. 
Hi 19 289 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

It had always been an unpopular institution among 
the radical Democrats. They were jealous of its power ; 
they believed it to be a source of corruption which 
would grow worse with time ; that deposits of govern- 
ment money in it were manipulated to enrich its offi- 
cers, and that its managers tried to punish or reward 
public men for opposing, or helping it. In the many 
years that have since elapsed we have had vast experi- 
ence with powerful financial institutions, the insurance 
companies, the Standard Oil, and innumerable trusts 
and monopolies, and in the light of all this it seems 
as if the Democratic view of the Bank was a sound one. 
The Bank had been very valuable, had, in fact, been 
almost a necessity for many years to correct the irregu- 
larities in the varying currency of the States; and 
it was still very valuable. Such institutions as private 
banks, more or less connected with government finance, I 
were familiar in European history. But in the peculiar * 
conditions of American politics ours was likely to be- 
come a colossus, with too much power for one institu- 
tion and too much of an interference in politics. With 
the increasing wealth and population of the country the 1 
Bank might become more powerful than the government, f 
The Democratic suspicion of its present corruption and 
interference in politics might be exaggerated, but in 
time the exaggerations would be simple facts. The 
opposition was already accusing Jackson of having at- 
tempted to control, for his own advantage, the election 
of a board of managers of one of the Bank's branches. 
The Bank would evidently soon become an object of 
control for both parties; it would become more inju- 
rious than useful ; and the sooner a simpler method was 
devised to take its place the better. Bat to invent a 
simpler and less injurious method was the difficulty. 

To Webster and the National Republicans, and, in- 
deed, to the majority of both Houses of Congress, in this 
year 1832, any danger of corruption or misuse of the 
Bank seemed very slight, and they voted to renew its 

290 



BANK OF THE UNITED STATES 

charter. Webster remained a bank man to the end of 
his days, and was supported in this by a very large 
part of the most conservative and best informed people 
of the time. They could see no prospect of success 
in any substitute or in any other method. 

When, however, the bill renewing the charter of 
the Bank was brought to Jackson for his signature, he 
vetoed it on the ground that Congress had no constitu- 
tional authority to create a bank, that the Bank was a 
private monopoly, dangerous to liberty and likely to pass 
into the control of foreigners in times of war through 
their ownership in its stock. It was, no doubt, well 
for us to get rid of the Bank ; and in this respect it has 
been said of Jackson that his instinct was right, although 
his reasons and violence were wrong. As to his in- 
stinct being right, you could have said the same of any 
man you picked up in the street and made President. A 
President of the United States is supposed to have 
something more than instinct. He is supposed to be 
capable of reasoning and of giving correct reasons for 
his conduct. Jackson's reasons were shown by Web- 
ster, and are generally admitted to have been mere 
demagogue absurdities, mere posing in his assumed 
character of the valiant protector of the poor against 
the rich. The Bank had been accepted as constitutional 
by lawyers and statesmen for forty years. The Su- 
preme Court had held that Congress had full authority 
to incorporate a bank as a necessary means of carrying 
on the functions of government, and regulating the coin- 
age. Few, if any, persons, even in the President's own 
party, had any doubt on the subject. But in " Old 
Hickory's " mind, the decision of the Supreme Court was 
nothing. He detested the principle that the Supreme 
Court was the final arbiter or interpreter of the Consti- 
tution, and in his veto message he set forth his theory 
that there w^as no final arbiter of what was and what was 
not constitutional, but that each department of the gov- 
ernment could interpret the Constitution for itself. " The 

291 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

opinion of the judges," he said, " has no more authority 
over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over 
the judges ; and on that point the President is inde- 
pendent of both." In other words, although he had 
taken an oath to execute the laws, he might decide 
that some of them were unconstitutional and refuse to 
execute them, although the Supreme Court had declared 
them constitutional. 

Legal confusion, social disorder, and anarchy would 
be the inevitable consequences of Jackson's principles 
if once established. He developed most evil influences 
in American political life. He was, as Webster showed, 
a most potent influence to inflame the poor against the 
rich; and he and his followers spread this feeling in 
America, together with a belief in the virtue of igno- 
rance, illiteracy, coarseness, and trickery, as a means 
of government against which Webster struggled with all 
his might and our better statesmen have been strug- 
gling ever since. Webster's speech was an admirable 
one, full of dignity and respect for the President, a 
striking contrast to the scurrility and crude abuse of the 
times ; but step by step, with much courtesy, destroying 
the President's argument and setting forth that balanced 
theory of constitutional interpretation, with the Supreme 
Court as the accepted interpreter, which is now univer- 
sally accepted by American lawyers. 

But the Bank could not be rechartered. The bill 
could not be passed over the President's veto, and four 
years later, when its charter expired, it went out of 
existence. Many years of disordered finance, panics 
and bankruptcies followed, while we struggled with the 
Jacksonian substitutes of pet banks and other schemes 
until we settled down to the modern sub-treasury plan 
and national banks secured by government bonds. We 
were well rid of the Bank, it must be confessed ; and the 
process by which we finally found our financial level 
was perhaps no more painful and destructive than other 
processes in nature or the wars by which great political 
questions are often settled. 

292 



BANK OF THE UNITED STATES 

In the year 1832 a question arose which brought out 
Webster's broad and national point of view. Mr. Van 
Buren, when Secretary of State, some three years be- 
fore, had prepared instructions for Mr. McLane, then 
going as minister to England, and in these instruc- 
tions, which related to our trade with the British West 
India colonies, Van Buren had commented with con- 
siderable asperity on the conduct of his political oppo- 
nents in the late administration of John Quincy Adams, 
and had even instructed McLane to remind the British 
government that a different set of persons were now in 
power who would better understand how to negotiate 
with the British Crown. This carping partisan tone 
in a diplomatic paper, which was supposed to emanate 
ifrom the people and the nation and not from a faction, 
was considered very outrageous by Webster and the 
Whigs. But no opportunity for a conspicuous punish- 
ment came until 1832, when President Jackson appointed 
Mr. Van Buren minister to England, and he had gone 
abroad accredited to the British Government before his 
appointment could be acted upon by the Senate. The 
Senate rejected the nomination and forced upon Mr. 
Van Buren the mortification of returning home. It 
IS supposed to have been a political mistake on the part 
of the Whigs, because it made a martyr of Van Buren 
and contributed to the popularity which afterwards 
enabled him to attain the Presidency. But as a con- 
spicuous punishment, it no doubt enforced upon all 
future secretaries of state, ministers, ambassadors and 
consuls the importance of remembering that they repre- 
sent their country and not a party. Webster's tone was 
a fine specimen of that upbuilding of a national spirit 
to which he was devoted. 

" Sir, I submit to you, and to the candor of all just men, 
f I am not right in saying that the pervading topic through the 
■vhole is, not American rights, not American interests, not 
American defence, but denunciation of past pretensions of 
3ur Government, reflections on the past Administration, and 
jixultation and a loud claim of merit for the .A.dministration 

293 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

now in power. Sir, I would forgive mistakes ; I v/ould pardon 
the want of information ; I would pardon almost anything 
where I saw true patriotism and sound American feeling ; but 
I cannot forgive the sacrifice of this feeling to mere party. I 
cannot concur in sending abroad a public agent who has not 
conceptions so large and liberal as to feel that, in the presence 
of foreign courts, amidst the monarchies of Europe, he is to 
stand up for his country, and his whole country; that no jot 
nor tittle of her honor is to suffer in his hands ; that he is not 
to allow others to reproach either his Government or his 
country, and far less is he himself to reproach either; that he 
is to have no objects in his eye but American objects, and no 
heart in his bosom but an American heart ; and that he is to 
forget self, and forget party, to forget every sinister and 
narrow feeling, in his proud and lofty attachment to the republic 
whose commission he bears." 

From these questions we can willingly turn for relief 
to the Thomas farm at Marshfield, on the coast of 
Massachusetts, where for eight years the Websters 
had spent part of almost every summer. It now be- 
came theirs by purchase. Captain Thomas had become 
too old for the management and it was considered best 
both for himself and his children that he should sell 
the place. The intimacy and friendliness of the fami- 
lies living together so many summers had been unusual, 
and now that the place had become his own Webster 
insisted on Captain Thomas and his wife remaining 
there, which they did until the death of the captain in 
1837. It was no part of the bargain, but simply Web- 
ster's wish and characteristic of his methods. He con- 
tinued to speak of the place as if it still belonged to the 
captain. " Captain Thomas and Mrs. Thomas," he 
would say, " are a part of Marshfield, and it can never 
be the same without them." At the same time he was 
paying for everything; and lavishing immense sums on 
buildings, improvements and the purchase of additional 
land. 

Although Marshfield was the name of the township, 
it soon came to mean in history and literature Webster's; 
farm. The distinguished men of that age were known 

294 



J 



MARSHFIELD 

by their farms and country places as much as by their 
statecraft ; and it would be as difficult to separate their 
characters from their chosen retreats as to separate 
Washington from Mount Vernon. Henry Clay with his 
thoroughbreds at his beloved Ashland, where the same 
strains of racers are still bred by his family; Jefferson 
with his saddle horses, his books and his carpenter shop 
at Monticello ; Madison at Montpelier ; old Jackson at 
the Hermitage; and Webster at Marshfield, are charac- 
teristic and attractive pictures of the time. Some mod- 
ern atlases still mark " Webster Place " on the map of 
Massachusetts ; and it has been said that a letter ad- 
dressed " Daniel Webster, Marshfield," would have 
reached its destination from any part of the world. 

Of Jackson, his biographer, Parton, has said that 
farming and horses were the only fomi of business he 
understood ; he failed at even-thing else except war. 
His Hermitage was a small but beautiful and most 
productive farm with one hundred and fifty acres. His 
delight in a fine cotton field and his interest in his 
horses, slaves and friends were like his devotion to his 
wife, the redeeming features of a not altogether useful 
career. His eye, it is said, would flash as in battle, and 
\. he would rise almost to the heights of eloquence when 
examining a high-bred horse and explaining the com- 
bination of beauty and power in its form. The broad- 
. ness and hospitality of life at the Hermitage, as de- 
. scribed by Parton, seem doubly attractive now in an 
. age w^hen those conditions are no longer so easily found, 
even in the South. 

Webster's farm, with acres continually added, in- 
: eluded in the end a large part of the township. The 
I house was about a mile from the ocean, and between the 
I house and the shore was a small stream or inlet from the 
sea called Green Harbor River or Cut River. The ex- 
plorer entering the mouth of this stream found it turn- 
ing northward and running with two branches about 
parallel with the beach for some two miles, making hun- 

295 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

dreds of acres of green marsh and meadow-lands, the 
natural feeding ground of wild fowl, plover and snipe. 
The ridge of sea beach was a rampart to these meadows 
on the east and the wooded, stony hills bounded them 
on the west. At the foot of the wooded hills stood the 
Webster house. Anotlier little stream from the ocean 
farther south made a second series of those marshes, 
which had evidently far back in colonial times given the 
name to the township. 

On the beach. Brant Rock extended for several hun- 
dred yards into the sea. In certain winds, especially 
northeasters, the brant in their semi-annual migrations 
along the coast passed near enough to this rock to 
afford sport; and even now they not infrequently give 
the same opportunity. Ducks could also be shot for 
several miles out by means of boats and decoys ; and 
in summer the fishing was excellent. Even now, al- 
though summer cottages and cheap boarding houses 
line the beach, the wild game tries to seek its old haunts ; 
and one pleasant day that I spent there in May, 1910. 
I heard the plaintive notes of the plover and snipe 
in the marshes. 

There was also deer hunting, and Webster occasion- 
ally indulged in it. A good many deer were to be 
found at that time not far from Marshfield in a district 
nearly twenty miles square, called the Plymouth Woods, 
filled with a great number of ponds, numbering, it is 
said, nearly two hundred. Loons and wood ducks fre- 
quented these ponds and eagles built their nests in the 
forest trees. Over one thousand and sixty deer were 
killed there in 183 1. It was the sort of wild life which 
in our time we have had to seek in the Adirondacks or 
northern Maine. 

One of the ponds was called Billington Sea because 
Francis Billington, one of the Pilgrims of the May- 
Hoiver, discovered it from the top of a tree; and about' 
the same time, January, 1621, two other trusty Pilgrims, 
John Goodman and Peter Brown, had the first deer hunt 

296 



MARSHFIELD 

of which we have any account in this country. They 
found one of the lakes and from the borders of it a mas- 
tiff and spaniel they had with them chased a deer into 
the forest. They followed, armed only with sickles, 
lost their way, spent the night in a snowstorm, and in 
their veracious narrative declare that they heard two 
lions roaring very near them. So they stood by a tree 
all night ready to climb up when the lions came. " But 
it pleased God," they say, " so to dispose that the beasts 
came not." - 

It was in Webster's time a sportsman's paradise; 
and although the land was sandy and not supposed to be 
fertile he set to work with great enthusiasm to study its 
capabilities and improve it. He had apple orchards, rich 
pasturage, fine crops of turnips and carrots, as well as 
corn, wheat and garden products. He was the first 
farmer in that region to use kelp, or sea weed, hauled 
from the beach as a fertilizer. He also used as fer- 
tilizer the small fish called menhaden or moss bunkers, 
a species of herring found in summer time a little way 
off shore in enormous numbers. These were taken in 
nets and spread over his land. In our time they are 
taken to be manufactured into oil and the refuse into 
fertilizer. He is said to have enonnously increased 
the productiveness of his land, as well as the land of his 
neighbors, who profited by his example and also by his 
fine breeds of cattle and sheep. There is not much now 
to be seen upon the place ; but in his day the buildings, 
according to his private secretary, numbered two or 
three dozen, outhouses, tenant houses, dairyman's cot- 
tage, fisherman's house, gardener's house, agricultural 
office and several large barns. Poultry, guinea hens, 
peacocks, ducks, a flock of tame wild geese on a little 
lake, with the Devon oxen, Alderneys, Herfordshires, 
Ayrshires, and horses made Marshfield almost a per- 
manent cattle show. Then there were innumerable fruit 



Lyman, Memorials of Webster, vol. ii, pp. 73, 74- 

207 



I 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

trees and forest trees, most of them planted by his own 
hands. He dehghted in tree planting; was very indig- 
nant with people who would not plant a tree because 
they might not live to enjoy its full shade, and was 
fond of quoting against them Stephen Girard, who said 
that he would plant a tree if he knew he were to die 
to-morrow. 

It was no wonder that he was not only satisfied 
but absorbed and delighted. On his arrival he was so 
eager that he would often throw his travelling bag into 
the hall, and, without going into the house, hasten to 
the bam to see his favorite oxen.^ He loved broad 
expanses, a wide horizon. He never could have satis- 
fied himself with a villa, or an ordinary country place 
with its trim walks, artificial pond, and solemn drives 
with a coachman. Mere " martin boxes," he called 
such places. He had no taste or fondness for indoor 
amusements. " He never played a game of chess or 
checkers, or billiards, or ten-pins in his life " ; and it is 
said that he was equally ignorant of cards, unless it was 
whist, a game which he would play with ladies. Noth- 
ing short of a large fann was enough, and it required 
two or three to satisfy him ; and there must be farmers 
for miles round him, so that he could go on long explor- 
ing expeditions among them. " He liked large things," 
says Parton, " the mountains, elms, great oaks, mighty 
bulls and oxen, wide fields, the ocean, the Union, and all 
things of magnitude. He liked great Rome far better 
than refined Greece, and revelled in the immense things 
of literature, such as ' Paradise Lost,' the ' Book of 
Job,' ' Burke,' ' Dr. Johnson,' and the ' Sixth Book 
of the ^neid.' " 

He had a lust for the free movement and power of 
nature and animal life. In his last illness he asked to 
have his great oxen led round near the window, where 



8 ' 



' This characteristic was communicated to me by Judge 
Edgar Aldrich of New Hampshire, who learned it in a con- 
versation with Porter Wright, Webster's farm superintendent. 

298 



MARSHFIELD 

he could see them. He loved the fascinating flight of 
game, the changes in nature, the growth and decay ; 
every leaf and branch was dear to him ; he planted trees 
to mark events ; even the fish in the water charmed him 
and roused his imagination and eloquence.* 

His hunger and passion for all these manifestations 
of power were insatiable. His delight in the early 
morning; in fact, his worship of it; and the beautiful 
things he has said of it are among the most touching 
scenes of his life. He loved the plunge of a boat in the 
seas, and a gun that shot strong and true. He was 
never ashamed of delight in simple pleasures. He was 
like the old fellow who would not give up the hammer 
gun because he loved to see the hammers work and 
would not give up black powder because he loved to 
see the smoke. 

Contrary to what has been sometimes said, he was 
fond of horses, though not as devoted to them as he 
was to the slow, solemn oxen. Over the grave of one 
of his best roadsters he placed a Latin inscription, 
" Siste Viator! Viator te major hie sistit." (Stop 
traveller; a greater traveller than you stops here.) 

So fond was Webster of natural history, that he is 
said to have intended writing a book to be called the 
" Natural History of Marshfield," " from the mouth in 
part," he said, " of Seth Peterson and edited by Daniel 
Webster," and he had collected many notes for this work. 
It was suggested, no doubt, by that delightful book 
White's " Natural History of Selborne." He was a 
great friend of the naturalist Audubon ; often had him 
out at Marshfield ; obtained numerous birds for him, and 
among others, the Canada goose, from which Audubon 
drew the fine picture in his " Birds of North America." ^ 

Few men have shown these tastes and qualities so 

* Full descriptions of Marshfield will be found in Harvey's 
Reminiscences of Webster, in Lanman's Private Life of him, 
and Lyman's Memorials. 

" Lanman, Private Life, p. 93. 

299 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

intensely, and fewer still have combined them with such 
ascendency in oratory, law and statesmanship. Mac- 
aulay, Burke and Chatham were wonderful parliamen- 
tary orators ; but Macaulay was a mere city man ; and 
Chatham and Burke, after their parliamentary labors, 
had no strength left for Webster's pleasures. The 
vital force in Webster must have been extraordinary. 
It impressed every one; and Carlyle, after seeing him 
in London, is reported to have said that he had often 
heard of American physical degeneracy, but had never 
seen such a magnificent specimen of it. 

The family farm. The Elms, or, more correctly, the 
Elms Farm, at Franklin, New Hampshire, he had se- 
cured for himself as a sentiment. He bought more 
land for it, and went there occasionally, often spending 
weeks. But it never could take the place of Marshfield. 
There was not enough to do, and above all, he could not 
be with the ocean. " At Franklin," he used to say, " I 
can see all in two days, but at Marshfield I can go out 
every day in the year and see something new." Atj 
the same time he seems to have had much enjoyment at' 
The Elms. Fie writes from there of "traversing the 
mountains and valleys and enjoying the glorious October 
weather," and what is more beautiful and invigorating 
than a New Hampshire October? The whole scene 
and all its associations, he writes, "are interesting to 
me. I like much to be here, and sometimes I think it 
may happen that I shall end my days in the spot of my 
first remembrances and consciousness." He kept a 
boat on one of the neighboring lakes. He was never 
happy unless he had boats ; and it is curious to see the 
detailed care with which the great statesman wrote 
directions for the repairs of his boat and for keeping 
up his mother's flower garden. For many years, to- 
wards the close of his life, on his annual visit to The 
Elms, crowds of people would assemble at the stations 
along the railroad to welcome him to his native State.*^ 

'Works, National Edition, vol. xxi, pp. 246, 249, 384, 385; 
Lanman, Private Life of Webster, p. 60. 

300 



MARSHFIELD 

The farming at the New Hampshire place was car- 
ried on by him with the same interest and pleasure as 
at Marshfield. His man in charge of The Elms was 
John Taylor, whom he always spoke of and addressed by 
his full name. He was a big, powerful farmer, with 
plenty of shrewd wit and sense, and clever remarks on 
political affairs ; the sort of man that always seems to 
have given Webster as much satisfaction as the farm 
itself. Fine cattle were bred at The Elms; there were 
sometimes nearly a hundred head there ; and the farm 
became nine hundred acres in size.'^ Cattle were fre- 
quently sent to and fro between The Elms and Marsh- 
field. Other statesmen of that age were remarkable 
for their farms, but none of them, except Webster, 
undertook to keep two expensive places going. He 
afterwards bought a third large farm, near La Salle, 
Illinois ; and we can understand why he died poor. The 
amount of attention he gave to Marshfield and The Elms 
is astonishing. He was continually writing letters to 
the people in charge of them. He says in one letter 
that he thinks a great deal every day about The Elms. 
He probably thought still more about Marshfield ; and 
one wonders where he got the time for those heavy 
litigations, the constitutional arguments, politics, his- 
tory and literature. But the man's nature and capacity 
were vast ; and, as already once said, it is probable that 
these pleasures of farming, sport and literature, which 
seemed to absorb three-fourths of his time, were his 
real life and health, which made the more conspicuous 
and famous part of him possible.^ 

Mr. Lunt has left in manuscript, in the Boston 
Athenaeum, a description of a visit to Marshfield to- 
wards the close of Webster's life. Other visitors, 
whether they came for admiration, curiosity or business, 
were, no doubt, received in the same way; asked to 
stay all day or several days ; given a saddle horse to 

^ Lyman Memorials, vol. i, p. 149. 

' Harvey, Reminiscences of Webster, pp. 295, 298, 301, 305, 
310, 420. 

301 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

ride about the domain and made a member of the house- 
hold. Webster would talk with them, show the curiosi- 
ties, pictures and books in his library, dilate with frank 
admiration on the things he loved or valued, and chen 
leave his guests to themselves, while he wandered out 
to some pleasure or interest on the farm, returning soon 
with more suggestions of amusement for his visitors. 
In this easy way he kept everything going, evidently 
taking the keenest delight in every detail of the place, 
the fence making, the crops, the garden and the animals. 

There was, indeed, about the life, a touch of the 
southern plantation and its hospitality which it is quite 
surprising to find on the stern coast of New England. 
Webster, no doubt, had acquired ideals from the south- 
ern Senators in Washington and it was one of the pas- 
sions of his life to live his ideals. Some yards away 
from the house he had a small building which he used 
as a law office. It separated his professional and heavy 
work from the more literary pleasures of the library. 
Law offices of this kind I have seen on some of the old 
southern plantations. In one notable instance I saw 
two such little buildings on the same place; one used 
by the father and the other by the son, who were both 
in large practice. 

Besides Seth Peterson, the boatman, there was Por- 
ter Wright, a sturdy farmer in charge of the place as 
John Taylor was at The Elms ; and both men were 
ahvays addressed and spoken of by their full names. 
Seth Weston seems to have been second to Wright 
and was also a favorite. To see these men about and 
watch their labors seems to have been an endless pleas- 
ure to Webster. He was constantly talking about them 
to his friends and they appear frequently in his letters. 
When doubtful in 1849 o^ the advantage of again be- 
coming Secretary of State, he writes to Mr. Blatchford, 
" Let me be left out of all cabinets but that of Porter 
Wright, Seth Weston and Seth Peterson." ^ None of 



* Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 304. 

302 



^^fW> 







a 



MARSHFIELD 

them, however, had quite as high a place in his affec- 
tions as Seth Peterson. To merely see Peterson and 
his red shirt in the distance was a pleasure to him. 

Another interesting character at Marshfield, per- 
haps the most valuable one, was Monica, one of those 
southern cooks who cook by a genius and inspiration 
no French chef can ever hope to imitate. She had 
come to the Websters in Washington as the result of an 
application for servants to that curiously named insti- 
tution, an intelligence office. She was a slave of one 
of the judges of the Circuit Court, and it was usual 
for the owners of slaves to hire them out precisely as 
they would their oxen and horses. The Websters were 
so pleased with Monica that the judge proposed to sell 
her to them ; but Webster declined to be the owner of a 
human being. He, however, bought Monica's freedom 
for $600 and employed her as a servant on wages, she 
agreeing to work only for her bare support until she 
had paid off the freedom money. She, however, re- 
mained Webster's cook all the rest of his life and he 
paid her wages without any reference to the money 
he had paid for her freedom. At his death she had 
about $2000 in the savings bank. She was devoted to 
the family and full of character, efficiency and rich 
African humor. Webster also purchased the freedom 
of a slave named William A. Johnson and assisted to 
purchase the freedom of another.^" 

Webster's library filled the whole wing which, as 
can be seen in the illustration, he added to the original 
Thomas house. The interior was quite effective in 
appearance ; and he was fond of telling visitors that it 
had been designed by his daughter Julia. The whole 
house was burned in 1879 together with many interest- 
ing curios and relics which it contained. A modern 
house was built in its place, and a few years after the 
fire the property was sold out of the Webster family to 

"Harvey, Reminiscences, pp. 311, 313; Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvi, p. 582. 

303 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Mr. Walton Hall. A few relics, Webster's arm chair 
and one or two other things, are in this new house. 

Of the numerous buildings of Webster's time scarce 
any remain except his little law office, which was a few 
yards from the house. The old colonial house of the 
famous Winslow family, which once stood on the prop- 
erty, the oldest house, as was supposed, in New England, 
is gone ; the game is largely gone ; all the activities 
and life he created are gone ; summer boarders and 
their shanty towns throng the sea beach. It is enough 
to disquiet him in his grave. Only the ocean still booms 
and roars on the beach as of old, biding the next geologic 
age, when it shall engulf all and recreate it nearer to the 
nature Webster loved. 

On Green Harbor River, near its mouth, I was 
shovvm an old two-story boat-house where Webster kept 
the craft he used for himself and his guests in sea 
fishing; and in the upper story, they said, there used 
to be beds which his friends used when they came in too 
late to go up the river to the house. Here is one of 
his letters of October, 1838, about the fishing: 

" There is nothing in this world, or at least for me, like 
the air of the sea, united to a kind of lazy exercise, and an 
absolute forgetfulness of business and cares. The mackerel 
fishing has been glorious. I have had some success, also, in 
Tautog way, while in the regular line of cod, haddock and 
halibut, business has been steadily cheerful. Little done in 
duck shooting, but I understand that in my absence last week, 
a shade of improvement was discernible in this branch. I 
cannot go extensively into it this year." (Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvi, p. 304.) 

Like all lovers of nature he, no doubt, loved the 
wailing of the wind in the trees in winter, for he loved 
to hear that moaning or peculiar hollow roar which the 
ocean makes after a storm. He had learned in some 
v/ay that the old name for this was the rote or rut of 
the sea ; and Seth Peterson's name for it, the cry of the 
sea. he thought very expressive, because it seemed to 
describe the wailing of the ocean as if in anger under 

304 



"^ 




Courte:>y uf Ihe s. b. M«_*_liiic Cuuiprtuy 



WEBSTER TRAMPING OVER MARSHFIELD 



MARSHFIELD 

the lashing of the winds. It was another point of merit 
for the invaluable Peterson. 

It is much to be regretted that he never wrote his 
book on natural history; for, judging from scraps of 
letters on this subject, it would have been delightful 
reading; he would have mixed up sport with it, and, 
Izaak Walton-like, would have told how to cook differ- 
ent kinds of game. 

" These are black fish sometimes called Tautog. Monica 
cooks them thus : — 

" Put the fish into a pan with a little butter, and let them 
fry till pretty nearly cooked, then put in a little wine and 
pepper and salt, and let them stew. She uses no water. A 
little more wine, pepper and salt to make a good gravy. 

" So says Monica, who stands at my elbow at half-past 
five o'clock. A good way also to make agreeable table com- 
panions of these fellows is to barbecue or broil them without 
splitting." 

"My dear young Friend, — I propose joining you this 
morning to pay our respects to the Tautog, but fear we shall 
hardly be able to tempt them from their lurking holes, under 
this bright sun. They are naturally shy of light. ' Tautog ' 
means simply the black fishes, ' og ' being a common termina- 
tion of plural nouns in the language of our Eastern Indians. 
I believe the fish is not known in Europe. Its principal habitat 
originally seems to have been Long Island Sound, Buzzard's 
Bay, and the Elizabeth Islands. Seventy years ago the Honor- 
able Stephen Gorham, father of the Honorable Benjamin 
Gorham, now of Boston, brought some of these fish alive from 
New Bedford and put them into the sea at Boston. They are 
now found as far east as the mouth of the Merrimac. They 
abound, as you know, on the south side as well as on the north 
side of our Bay. Indeed it is thought that by their own 
progress north they doubled Cape Cod, not long after Mr. 
Gorham's deposit at Boston." (Works, National Edition, vol. 
xvi, p. 660.) 

The last of the above letters was written July 23, 
1852, only three months before his death. He often 
used to say that he wanted to live three lives, one to be 
devoted to astronomy, one to geology, and the third to 
classical literature, and he might have added, a fourth 
to natural history. 

20 305 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

All the neig-hboring- region — Cohasset, Chelsea 
Beach and Nantasket Beach — were explored by Webster 
in his sporting excursions for wild fowl. Many stories 
of his adventures were, of course, afloat in his lifetime. 
It was the day of flintlock guns and black powder, and 
before reloading the sportsman often applied his lips to 
the muzzle to blow the smoke from the barrel. When 
Webster, in his rough clothes, had smutted his already 
dark, swarthy face by this blowing process, he looked 
like a very piratical and terrible personage. 

He once accidentally sprinkled a stranger with shot, 
and walked towards him, saying: 

" My dear sir, I am very sorry, did I shoot you? " 
" Yes," said the man, staring into the grimy face, 
" and judging by your looks you have done that sort of 
thing before." 

One day a farmer met him roaming the marshes. 
" This is Daniel Webster, I believe." 
" That is my name." 

" Well now," said the farmer, " I am told that you 
can make from three to five dollars a day pleadin' cases 
up in Boston." 

Mr. Webster replied that he was sometimes so for- 
tunate as to receive that amount for his services. 

" Well now," returned the rustic, " it seems to me, I 
declare, if I could get as much as that in the city pleadin' 
law cases, I would not be a wadin' over these marshes 
this hot weather, shooting little birds." ^^ 

Marshfield is only some ten miles north of Plymouth 
and is the region into which the Pilgrim Fathers who 
came over in the May^on'cr spread themselves. Every- 
where their descendants, their graves, their thrifty, in- 
telligent views of life, and their unadorned and strong- 
minded forms of religion were to be found. Webster' 
loved all this. As a student of history it was a very 
congenial atmosphere for him; and the old-fashioned 



Harvey, Reminiscences of Webster, p. 293. 

306 



MARSHFIELD 

ways of the people delighted him. He wandered over 
the whole region, making the acquaintance of every- 
body. On his place, about half a mile from the house, is 
an old graveyard where rest not a few of the old colo- 
nists, captains, farmers, and ministers of the Gospel. 
The head- and foot-stones made of the native dark slate- 
colored stone, with old-fashioned, neat engraving round 
the borders, are pleasantly impressive, and in better 
taste than some modern glaring white marble monu- 
ments beside them. 

From one headstone I learned that " Here lyeth 
ye ashes of ye Reverened learned and pious Mr. Ed- 
ward Thompson, Pastor of the church of Marshfield, 
who suddenly departed this life March y. i6, 1705." 
And the footstone tells us that 

" Here in a tyrant's hand doth captive lye, 
A rare synopsis of Divinity. 
Old patriarchs, prophets, Gospel Bishops meet, 
Under deep silence in this winding sheet. 
All rest awhile, in hopes and full intent, 
When their King calls to sit in Parliament." 

Webster himself rests here in this graveyard among 
the old pilgrims. 



307 



XII 

NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

The greatest admirers of Webster's reply to Hayne, 
while they were sure that he had raised the Union cause 
to a higher plane of popularity, were far from suppos- 
ing that he had settled the controversy. The general 
opinion of the majority of the people throughout the 
country was admittedly against the right of a State to 
secede from the Union or nullify Acts of Congress. 
But the minority were by no means silenced. They 
were generally believed to be powerful enough to seize 
some favorable opportunity to break up the Union ; to 
take one or two States out of it ; and it was feared that 
the rest of the country, though disapproving, would 
look on passively and allow it to be done. Some act of 
secession might be made a precedent at a time when 
the majority could not be aroused to the point of resist- 
ing it by force. That irresponsible and trouble-saving 
phrase, much used in later years, " erring sisters go in 
peace," might become a popular doctrine, or so far 
popular that it would cripple all effective action among 
the lovers of union. 

Speculations as to how long the Union will endure 
have been seldom or never heard in our time of the last 
forty years. But during the fifty years before the Civil 
War they were the common topics of conversation. 
Whether to allow the controversy to slumber; or to 
arouse it and fight it out; and when aroused, whether 
it would not be better to compromise with it, were the 
great questions. 

The fundamental cause of nullification in the period 
after 1825 was slavery. Although the trade and geo- 
graphical conditions of the country were sectional, al- 
-. though Benton assumed to say for the West that it 

308 



to 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

wanted no transportation facilities across the Alle- 
ghanies, no railroads or canals to connect it with the 
East, that it preferred to live by itself and carry on 
all its trade at New Orleans, yet the West had no real 
inclination for either nullification or secession. The 
only place where nullification and secession were strong 
was in the South, the land of slavery. 

Not that the South gave this out as the cause of her 
nullification theories ; far from it. The usual reticence 
and precaution on that question were carefully pre- 
served. It was the protective tariff that was put for- 
ward as the cause, the protective system for which the 
South Carolina leaders, especially Calhoun, had voted 
and argued in 1816, as a benefit to the country ; and 
now since 1828 were announcing as a sufficient 
cause for breaking up the L^nion. Calhoun went into 
long explanations to show that he had not changed either 
his mind or his ground in regard to the principle of 
protection, that his speeches in 18 16 were hastily deliv- 
ered, that the tariff of 18 16 was not really protective 
and so on. But there were his speeches in print as de- 
liberate and careful as any of his others, and there were 
his words calling it a protective tariff and recommending 
it as such. To convict him of the change Webster 
merely reprinted those speeches. 

Calhoun had to change his ground also as to the 
constitutional power of Congress over slavery in the 
territories. But no matter about these inconsistencies. 
A statesman should have the same right as an ordinary 
sensible citizen, to change his mind, although in public 
he must sometimes go through the farce of pretending 
that he never changes. 

Calhoun had, however, from his own point of view, 
good reasons for his change. He must change or go 
out of politics. He was a southerner; he must stand 
by his own people ; and they had changed. Soon after 
1825 they saw that the foundations of their wealth, 
and their social and political system were threatened. 
In fact, they began to be conscious of danger to slavery 

309 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

soon after 1820. They saw that the majority of the 
country, the North and the Northwest, were not content 
with having abohshed slavery in their own communities 
or with never having had it there, and were becoming 
more and more intolerant of it in the South.^ 

There were not a few bright minds in South Carolina 
and some of them by serial articles in the newspapers 
had been extraordinarily successful in working up the 
high-strung popular feeling of the State, exaggerating 
it, exasperating it against the tariff and inflaming the 
people into believing it was monstrous wicked that the 
majority should rule, that three-fourths should tax a 
quarter, that a majority in the Union should tax a 
minority in Carolina. This method carried the State, 
and Hayne and Calhoun had to yield to it. It forced 
Calhoun against his will to change his opinions ; and 
in these newspaper articles are to be found arguments 
afterwards used by Calhoun and commonly supposed 
to have originated with him. 

There had been no public act, no avowed or official 
attempt to interfere with slavery ; no move in that direc- 
tion had been made in Congress or in any department of 
the government. On the contrary, every northern 
statesman had, like Webster, announced in the most 
public and explicit manner that slavery in the South 
was protected and guaranteed by the Constitution. This 
had been well enough in the early part of the century ; 
and in those days the South had never had any objection 
to academic discourses on the moral wrong and the prac- 
tical evils of slavery. In fact, they had delivered such 
discourses themselves. Jefferson and other prominent 
southerners openly described slavery as an evil. Jeffer- 
son was supposed to have been the author of the clause 
prohibiting slavery in the ordinance for the govern- 
ment of the northwest territory ; and in those days there 

* Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, pp. 49, 51, 53, 
59, 61, 62, 63, 72, 75- 

310 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

were far more emancipation societies in the South than 
there were in the North, 

But in the last few years northern sentiment had 
become strangely aggressive. There was a note in it 
that had never been observed before. The guarantees 
of the Constitution were repeated in the same language ; 
not the slightest move against slavery was made in 
Congress ; but the southerners began to realize that 
people in the North were beginning to organize a cru- 
sade against slavery without any regard to either Con- 
gress or the Constitution. Hayne had referred to this 
movement in one of his speeches in the Great Debate in 
1830; and since then the movement had spread and 
grown stronger. 

The southern leaders in South Carolina saw that 
this movement must be met. Their constituents were 
forcing them to meet it. Their constituents believed 
that the abolition movement in the North meant ruin 
to the South. Slavery was everything to the South ; 
or, at least, it seemed to be so. It was the source of 
their wealth, their social system, everything, as it 
seemed, that made life worth living. It seemed more 
important to them than the Union. To save it, save 
their property, their customs and their old way of life, 
they must be able to live more or less independently of 
the rest of the country. They must be able to annul 
laws of Congress that did not suit their social, political 
or business systems. They must draw the line of self- 
protection round themselves. If necessary, they must 
leave the Union and form an independent confederacy 
with slavery as its cornerstone. 

But they did not want to leave the Union. The 
Union had always had obvious advantages. They did 
not want secession if it could be avoided. They pre- 
ferred nullification, by which they thought they could 
remain in the Union and nullify any of its acts that were 
objectionable so far as those acts applied to themselves. 

Not being able to state the real cause of their 

311 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

trouble (for neither Congress nor any department of the 
national government had made the slightest move 
against slavery), they had seized upon the protective 
tariff acts of Congress of 1828 and of 1832, which had 
become objectionable to their people, and which, if 
nullified, would become an excellent precedent and 
build round them their first line of defence. They had 
worked themselves up into a most violent feeling against 
the tariff, a most exaggerated fear of its evils. Through 
public meetings, the protest of their Legislature, and 
the speeches of Hayne in 1830, they had formally set 
forth their theory of nullification ; but they had taken 
no practical steps to nullify the tariff acts of Congress. 
Now, however, under the leadership of Calhoun, they 
were prepared to go much farther. 

Their arguments described the South as in a deplor- 
able state of poverty and destitution as a result of the 
protective tariff. " Ruin and decay," says the report 
of the committee of the South Carolina convention of 
1832, " are everywhere visible round us ; memorials 
proclaiming the fatal character of that system which 
has brought upon one of the finest portions of the globe, 
in the full vigor of its early manhood, the poverty and 
desolation which belong only to the most sterile regions, 
or to the old age and decrepitude of nations." Similar 
statements are in the speeches of Calhoun and Hayne. 
The plantation States were being reduced to " poverty 
and utter desolation " ; and, according to these state- 
ments, the ruin and poverty were to be seen everywhere 
by anyone travelling through the South, which, being 
a purely agricultural region, exporting cotton, rice, in- 
digo, and tobacco, was compelled by the tariff to pay 
a high tribute for all its imported articles, manu- 
factured woollens, cottons, iron, sugar, and salt. This 
difference between the price of the imported articles 
under the tariff and the price that would be paid for 
them if there were no protective tariff, was the supposed 
cause of the financial ruin of the planters. 

312 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

In considering this statement we must remember that 
it was put forth by the majority party in South Carolina 
who were in favor of nulhfication. It was flatly denied 
by the minority party. The minority, composed of some 
of the most prominent and able men of the State, had 
denied, as Webster pointed out, that there was any 
ruin or decay in their commonwealth. The so-called 
ruin and decay was, as Petigru, one of the minority 
leaders, said, a " mere rhetorical flourish." - The State 
was as prosperous, they said, as ever; and, indeed, this 
has been generally supposed to have been the period 
when the whole plantation aristocracy of the Carolinas 
and Georgia was at the height of its wealth, power 
and prestige. The old Virginia tobacco aristocracy was 
passing away, because of changed trade conditions of 
tobacco. But farther south cotton and rice were still 
made profitable by slavery. 

There is no doubt that the tariff had injured the 
commercial and ship-owning interest in South Carolina 
as it had injured the same interest in New England. 
It is also probable that there had been loss in the Caro- 
linas and old seaboard slave States because new cotton 
lands were being rapidly developed in the recent wilder- 
ness regions of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and 
underselling the cotton of the old Atlantic seaboard 
States. All this was loss; the sort of loss that fre- 
quently happens ; but not destitution and decay. It 
would, indeed, be very extraordinary if the mere in- 
creased tax caused by the tariff could produce the pov- 
erty which the nullification leaders described. There 
were purely agricultural communities in the North and 
West which suffered no such decay from the tariff. 
There are such communities to-day. They may object 
to the tax the tariff inflicts on them ; they undoubtedly 
suffer a certain loss from it ; but they are not driven 
by it into poverty and destitution ; nor do they threaten 

^^ Webster's Works, vol. iii, p. 493; Houston, Nullification 
in South Carolina, p. no. 

3U 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to break up the Union on account of it any more than 
the people who send their children to private schools 
threaten to rebel because they have to pay a tax to sup- 
port public schools for other people's children. The 
South itself in the last forty years has steadily increased 
in wealth and prosperity in spite of the protective tariff. 
But in that forty years there has been no slavery in the 
South. 

There was the rub. If any process of real decay had 
started in the South it was from slavery. The opinion 
was often expressed at the time, it was one of the recog- 
nized principles of the political economy of the day, that 
slavery was profitable only in new or half-wild countries. 
As a country developed, slavery became less and less 
profitable until at last it was a positive loss ; and then 
history showed that it was usually abolished, as it had 
been in nearly all European countries, and was on the 
eve of being abolished in the British and French colonies 
and Mexico. Benton was fond of saying that slavery 
would take care of itself in America and be abolished 
as soon as it became decidedly unprofitable. Von Hoist 
in liis history of the United States has collected a con- 
siderable mass of evidence to show that slavery was 
already becoming unprofitable, and that between this 
period and i860 values of all property in the South 
were as steadily sinking as they have steadily risen since 
the Civil War. 

Calhoun had recently written a pamphlet, in the form 
of a letter to the Governor of South Carolina, rearguing 
the whole nulHfication question; and Webster regarded 
this pamphlet as of such dangerous tendency that he 
was preparing to reply to it in an open letter to Chan- 
cellor Kent, of New York. But before he could do this 
the South Carolinians took such a serious step that 
the question came up in the Senate in the form best 
suited to Webster's methods. 

The Carolinians had hoped, they said, that the tariflF 
of 1828 would be changed or repealed ; but no change 
being made and the act having been made, if anything, 

314 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

worse by the new act of July, 1832, they proceeded in 
their own fashion to aboHsh the whole tariff legislation. 
In November, 1832, a convention of delegates represent- 
ing as they believed the full sovereignty of the State of 
South Carolina, formally declared the tariff laws of 
Congress null and void within the boundaries of the 
State and directed the Legislature to pass such laws 
as should be necessary to carry this declaration into 
effect after the first day of February, 1833. The Legis- 
lature met a few days afterwards and passed laws for 
the replevin of any imported goods that might be seized 
for duty by the United States officials. Heavy penalties 
were enacted against persons who should undertake to 
execute the tariff laws ; and military forces were directed 
to be raised to repel any efforts of the Government at 
Washington to coerce the State. 

In a couple of months, therefore, the tariff laws of 
Congress were to be abolished in South Carolina and 
imported goods could then, apparently, be landed in 
that State free of duty. If the government and the 
rest of the country accepted the situation a precedent of 
actual nullification would be created. A President like 
Buchanan, of thirty years later, might possibly have 
doubted his authority to coerce a State and presumably 
he would have allowed the situation to drift. President 
Jackson might have taken the same course. He had 
already refused to enforce a decision of the Supreme 
Court in Georgia ; he had allowed the State of Georgia 
to create a precedent of nullification ; so why not refuse 
to enforce a law against which the southern wing of his 
own party in South Carolina were rebelling? But for- 
tunately he had quarrelled with Calhoun and his violence 
and passions were all enlisted against the Carolinians, 
He at once issued a proclamation ^ based on the reason- 



° Said to have been prepared by Edward Livingston of 
Louisiana, Secretary of State; but Webster believed it to have 
been written by Mr. Trist, an able young man in the State 
Department. (Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 
224.) 

3IS 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

ing of Webster's reply to Hayne; directed the revenue 
officers to enforce the laws as usual, denounced as 
treason any attempts to interfere with them, and sent 
a naval force to occupy Charleston harbor and enforce 
the laws of Congress. 

This was in December when Congress was beginning 
to assemble and nothing more except debate would hap- 
pen until the first of February, the time fixed by South 
Carolina for the beginning of actual nullification. In 
fact, as Webster pointed out, nothing would happen 
after the first of February unless some importer in 
South Carolina refused to pay duty on goods and the 
goods were seized. If the importer then under the State 
nullification laws attempted to replevy the goods the 
United States collector would refuse to give up the 
goods and it would be a trial of strength between collec- 
tor and sherifif, the one to be supported by the army of 
the United States and the other by the volunteer militia 
of South Carolina. 

President Jackson sent a special message to Congress 
describing the situation and asking for legislation to 
aid him in enforcing the laws. A bill was introduced 
authorizing him, when the collection of duties was 
obstructed in any port, to change the collection district 
and establish the custom house in a more secure place; ^ 
and to shield customs officials from suits in the State 
courts, cases against them were authorized to be re- 
moved to the Federal tribunals. 

This was the Force Bill, as it was afterwards known 
in history, and it created some confusion in the ranks of 
the President's party. Many Democrats assailed it as 
a measure of tyranny, compared it to the Boston Port 
Bill of revolutionary times, and declared that it sacri- 
ficed everything to arbitrary power. The South Caro- 
lina Legislature answered the President's efforts in a 
series of resolutions, denouncing his proclamation and 
setting him at defiance. " Old Hickory's " blood was up ; 
he had been using very violent language about the 

316 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

Carolina leaders ; and at any moment he might take the 
law into his own hands in Tennessee style, arrest Cal- 
houn and the rest of them, and perhaps order them hung 
or shot. 

In this predicament the President's friends sought 
the aid of Webster to carry the Force Bill through 
Congress and protect it from the President's own party ; 
and the South Carolinians agreed to " suspend " nullifi- 
cation until the adjournment of Congress. Webster 
accepted the task. He soon began to succeed with the 
Force Bill, and by ridiculing the Democrats for oppos- 
ing their own President's measure, he was bringing the 
bill into a good position to be finally passed. It was an 
odd coalition, the conservative, tactful lawyer-orator and 
the radical and violent old military chieftain. But the 
combination was a powerful one, both in Congress and 
before the public ; and was forcing Calhoun and the 
nullificationists to the wall. 

The day after the Force Bill was introduced, Cal- 
houn, who was again a Senator from South Carolina, 
had introduced three resolutions setting forth the prin- 
ciples of nullihcation. Hayne was no longer in the 
Senate, and it was now Calhoun's turn to defend the 
southern doctrine. 

The first thing to be observed about the resolutions 
is, that they abandon Hayne's idea, that the States 
having become parties to the compact called the Con- 
stitution, the general government created by that com- 
pact became an additional sovereign party to it. Web- 
ster had shown this to be such an absurd method of 
legal reasoning that it had to be dropped, and since 
then has never been maintained by anyone. So Cal- 
houn fell back on the general statement of the old 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, that the people 
of the several States were " united as parties to the 
constitutional compact, to which the people of each State 
acceded as a separate and sovereign community," and 
" as in all other cases of compact among sovereign par- 

317 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

ties, without any common judge, each has an equal right 
to judge for itself." The rest of the resolutions were 
taken up with the doctrine that it was the States as 
parties, and not the people collectively, that had made 
the Constitution. 

Most of Calhoun's speech against the Force Bill 
dealt with the iniquity of the tariff and explanations of 
his change of position. But it was beyond the utmost 
exertion of his metaphysical subtlety to show that his 
advocacy of protection in 1816 was the same as his 
present deadly enmity to it. What he said in support of 
his resolutions on the constitutional question may be 
summarized in five statements: 

1. He could not in the nature of things conceive of a 
division of power without an equal right to each to judge of 
the extent of the power allotted to each. 

2. The words union, federal, united, all imply a combina- 
tion of sovereignties, not an association of individuals. Who 
ever heard of the United States of New York, Massachusetts 
or of Virginia? 

3. Sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme 
power in a State ; and we might as well speak of half a square 
or half a triangle, as of half a sovereignty. Therefore the 
States have never surrendered their sovereignty to the general 
government. 

4. The whole sovereignty is in the several States, while 
the exercise of sovereign power is divided, a part being 
exercised under compact through the general government and 
the residue through the separate State governments. 

5. Each State, under the nullification doctrine, possesses 
within itself the means of self-protection by nullifying any 
dangerous act of Congress. This prevents the tyranny of the 
majority over a minority. The result will necessarily be 
unanimity in council, ardent attachment of the parts to the 
whole and a perfect union. There will be no secession or 
breaking up of the Union ; that will occur only when the Gen- 
eral Government becomes consolidated and tyrannizes over a 
minority. 

His theory, it is easy to see, is the same as Hayne's, 
except that it does not make the general government a 

318 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

party to the compact. It is Hayne's theory supported 
by metaphysical reasoning, the old metaphysics of the 
Scotch school, which had been very prevalent in Cal- 
houn's youth and which his biographers say he studied 
with much ardor. He had studied law, but he had had 
little or no practice, and no training in legal and con- 
stitutional reasoning. His method is the direct oppo- 
site of the legal and historical method of Webster. 
Abandoning the precise words and details of the Con- 
stitution, Calhoun tries to reason out what in the 
nature of things such a government must or should be. 
Webster, on the other hand, stays within the four 
corners of the document, as the lawyers say, and con- 
fines his reasoning to the actual provisions and words 
of the instrument and the history of its adoption. 

Webster's reply, though less popular than the reply 
to Hayne, is in some respects much abler as a legal 
and constitutional argument. He had been called upon 
rather suddenly in the Hayne debate. But now he was 
well prepared with three years of reflection and no per- 
sonal explanations about the Hartford Convention and 
inconsistencies to interfere with the real point at issue. 

He plunged at once into the full tide of the subject. 
He showed what, with more preparation and less inter- 
ference of other things, he might have shown in the 
reply to Hayne, namely, that it was a pure assumption 
to call the Constitution a compact. The word compact 
means a treaty or league ; but the Constitution nowhere 
calls itself a league, a treaty or a compact. It calls itself 
in its opening paragraph a constitution, a word which 
means an organic or fundamental law or form of govern- 
ment, a very different conception from that of a treaty 
or compact between sovereigns. The State of South 
Carolina herself in accepting the Constitution had de- 
clared that she " ratified this Constitution or form of 
government." All the States in their formal declara- 
tion accepting the Constitution used the word ratify, 



319 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

some using the additional words ordain, establish, assent 
to, adopt, but all using ratify. The Constitution itself 
uses ordain and establish. It uses the word compact 
only once, and that is when it declares that the States 
shall enter into no compact. It distinguishes itself 
from a league or confederacy ; for it says that all debts 
contracted shall be as valid under this Constitution as 
under the confederation. It does not say as valid under 
this compact, or this league, or this confederation, as 
under the former confederation, but as valid under this . 
Constitution. 

None of the States in accepting the instrument used 
the word accede which Calhoun had slipped into his , 
resolutions to describe the action of the States in 
accepting. ^ 

" The natural converse of accession," said Webster, " is ■ 
secession ; and therefore, when it is stated that the people of ! 
the States acceded to the Union, it may be more plausibly- 
argued that they may secede from it. If in adopting the 
Constitution nothing more was done but acceding to a com- 
pact nothing would seem necessary, in order to break it up, 
but to secede from the same compact. But the term is wholly 
out of place. . . . The people of the United States have 
used no such form of expression in establishing the present 
government. They do not say that they accede to a league, 
but they declare that they ordain and establish a Constitu- 
tion." _ I 

" Let then his first resolution tell the exact truth ; let it i 
state the fact precisely as it exists ; let it say that the people I 
of the several States ratified a Constitution or form of govern- 
ment ; and then, sir, what will become of his inference in his \ 
second resolution, which is in these words, viz., 'that as in all 
other cases of compact among sovereign parties each has an 
equal right to judge for itself as well of the infraction as of 
the mode and measure of redress.'" 

This stripped the nullification argument of its cun- 
ning assumptions by which it had attempted to create a 
new constitution unknown to the people who ratified and 
established the instrument framed in 1787. Nullifica- 
tion was revolution ; there could be no peaceful nulli- 

320 j 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

fication ; if a State could nullify a law of Congress, she 
could at once break the Constitution and the Union.* 

" To begin with nullification with the avowed intent, 
nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment, and 
general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of 
Niagara and cry out that he would stop half way down." 

Since the debate with Hayne, Webster had evidently 
worked out every instance which showed that when 
the Constitution was adopted it was intended to be a 
form of government and not a treaty, and he poured 
them out upon Calhoun in a flood. We can give here 
only a few of them. 

The principle of nullification was that the States 
cannot be bound by any act of Congress if the constitu- 
tionality of that act is not admitted by all ; or, in other 
words, that no single State is bound, against its own 
consent, by a law of imposts or revenue. That was the 
difficulty under the old confederation, the Congress 
could collect no revenue of its own power; it was de- 
pendent on the States ; and the Constitution was intended 
to remedy this weakness by giving Congress the power 
to collect imposts or revenue without the consent of 
particular States to pay the debts of the Revolution 
and prevent bankruptcy of the national treasury. 
i The Constitution avowedly acts upon individuals 
. land has always done so. The confederation acted only 
upon States. The Constitution may punish individuals 
for treason and all other crimes of the code. It may 
tax individuals and demand military service of them. 
jAU this clearly distinguishes it from a confederation. 
rilt makes war or peace for the individual, and that no 

* William Drayton, of South Carolina, believed in seces- 
liicn, but denied any right of nullification. A State, he said, 
;;ould leave the Union if she chose, but if she remained in the 
Jnion she must obey the laws. To remain in the Union and 
ittempt to nullify acts of Congress was an inconsistent and 
mpossible position. 

21 321 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

State may do. It maintains armies and navies, and 
that no State may do. It regulates commerce, it regu- 
lates the individual in war and in commerce, and this is 
the characteristic of a government and not of a con- 
federacy. 

Under the Articles of Confederation the States madet 
promises and agreements. In the Constitution they 
make none, because in the Constitution it is the people 
and not the States who speak ; and they place commands, 
injunctions and prohibitions upon the States. 

When Congress declares war, may a State nullify 
that war and remain at peace ? When the President and 
Senate make peace, may a single State continue the 
war? 

In the convention which framed the Constitutioni 
there was a party in favor of retaining the old Articles 
of Confederation, and the convention with that plan of 
compact before them deliberately rejected it and took 
the plan of a national constitution. 

At the time of its adoption the Constitution was 
recommended as an improvement over the confederacy, 
because under the confederacy " a single State can rise 
up, and put a veto upon the most important public 
measures." 

At the time the Constitution was adopted every one 
knew that under it the general government, that is the 
Supreme Court and Congress, would be the final inter- 
preters of its power. This was announced, notably by 
Madison in Virginia, by Luther Martin in Maryland, 
and by Pinckney in South Carolina. " Everywhere it 
was admitted by friends and foes that this power 
was in the Constitution. By some it was thought dan- 
gerous, by most it was thought necessary; but by all 
it was agreed to be a power actually contained in the 
instnmient." 

The South Carolina Convention had set forth the; 
rather surprising proposition that majority govern- 
ment is essentially wrong, that it is a tyranny, and that 

322 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

it cannot or ought not to be maintained in the United 
States. This was a favorite theory of Calhoun, and he 
had tried to show its soundness by a metaphysical 
subtlety which in the end was nothing but a jumble of 
words. He made the distinction between absolute ma- 
jority, by which he meant a majority in Congress repre- 
senting all the States, and a majority concurrent, by 
which he meant a majority in a single State, which dis- 
approved of some act of the absolute majority in Con- 
gress. The concurrent majority in the single State 
must, he said, overrule, sO' far as itself was concerned, 
the absolute majority in Congress. It was simply com- 
ing round, as he was always doing, to his old proposi- 
tion, that each of the twenty-four States could interpret 
and nullify all Acts of Congress as they pleased, which 
was the old Articles of Confederation over again, and 
would end as they had ended, in no government at all. 
This inevitable result of his theories he was constantly 
trying to conceal by new inventions and subtleties ; and, 
indeed, to him these inventions seemed very necessary ; 
for, if South Carolina was to protect slavery and secure 
its permanence within her borders for the future, she 
must establish several absurdities, and among them the 
doctrine that in a republic the minority should be able 
to outvote the majority. 

In his reply to Webster, Calhoun began by quoting 
a passage from the reply to Hayne in which Webster had 
said that as far as concerned slavery he would let it 
stand as he found it in the Constitution ; " it is the 
original bargain — the compact — let it stand." He would 
not, he said, " evade the constitutional compact." 

Washington also, Calhoun said, had used the word 
accede in reference to the admission of North Carolina 
to the Union. Nevertheless, he said, he would strike 
out these words, accede and constitutional compact, 
from the resolutions and amend them in accordance with 
Webster's ideas. But his resolutions as amended still 
asserted that the Constitution was a compact. So he 

323 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

was again juggling and coming round to the old state- 
ments. 

He said that Webster had said that the Constitution 
was founded on compact, but that it is no longer a 
compact ; it is founded on compact, but not a compact 
results from it; and he charged this as a confusion of 
thought impossible to understand. But it was per- 
fectly clear, as Webster had put it, and there was no 
confusion whatever. He had said that when the people 
of the States decided to send delegates to a convention 
to make a new general government that was an agree- 
ment among themselves to have a new government ; it 
was not the new government itself; it was the 
social compact, as the old writers in Europe called 
it; the compact or consent of the people that was 
supposed in theory to be at the basis of all governments, 
even the European monarchies, which were certainly 
regular governments and not compacts or leagues. The 
result of this agreement or social compact to have a 
government in our case was that the delegates agreed 
to have a constitution which they described and which 
described itself as a form of national government and 
not a compact. 

Much of Calhoun's speech consisted of this sort of 
misconstruing of Webster's statements. Calhoun could 
not keep himself from subtleties. For a time he tried 
to take Webster on his own ground, and bring forward 
historical instances to show that at the time it was 
adopted the Constitution was regarded as a compact or 
league. He took a week to prepare for his answer to 
Webster; but could find no instances for his purpose. 
He quoted some passages from Burlamaqui, a European 
writer of nearly half a century before the Constitution, 
to show that in Europe fundamental laws, or what he 
said Webster called a constitution, were sometimes 
spoken of as covenants. He quoted also modern in- 
stances long since the adoption of the Constitution, in 
which it was called a compact. It had, of course, often 

324 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

been called a compact by his own party and at the time 
of the Hartford Convention certain New England people 
had spoken of it in that way. But none of these in- 
stances were to the point. The question was, What had 
it been called by the States in adopting it; what did 
its framers and its adopters say that it was? What 
people had said long before its adoption or what they 
had said long after was entirely irrelevant. 

The only instance he could find for his side was 
in the adopting language used by New Hampshire and 
Massachusetts, which, before ratifying and adopting 
the Constitution, said that they acknowledged " with 
grateful hearts the goodness of the Supreme Ruler of 
the Universe, in affording the people of the United States 
an opportunity ... of entering into an explicit and 
solemn compact with each other, by assenting to and 
ratifying a new constitution." This passage had been 
quoted by Webster himself, because it said that " the 
people of the United States entered into a compact 
with each other ; " and not that the States entered into 
a compact. It was an instance, therefore, for Webster's 
side and not for Calhoun's, and when the adopting lan- 
guage of both these States came to the actual adopting 
clause, they declared that they ratified a constitution 
and not a compact. In fact, there was no instance 
where a State or a framer had declared that a compact 
or league was ratified. 

Having failed on the historical portion of his argu- 
ment and conscious that he could accomplish nothing on 
this point, Calhoun fell bade on his metaphysical subtle- 
ties and suppositions, which constituted most of his 
speech. 

Webster had called attention to the preamble of the 
Constitution : " We, the people of the United States of 
New Hampshire, etc., do ordain, etc.," as showing that it 
was the people of all the States and not the States indi- 
vidually that had made the Constitution. Calhoun said 
that the passage must mean " We the people of the States 

325 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

united," and not " of the United States," and this " in- 
version alone," he said, " without further explanation, 
removes the ambiguity ; " that is, brought the passage 
to mean what he wanted. This was the method he 
and nullifiers were constantly adopting ; " rewriting the 
Constitution," as Webster called it; stating what it 
should be or must be, without regard tO' what it actually 
was or tO' what it said of itself. 

Finally, knowing that these tricks were really useless 
and that his only hope was to say something that might 
possibly meet the overwhelmingly strong argument that 
the Constitution was adopted because the old Articles 
of Confederation, admittedly a compact, were so weak 
a government as to be worthless, he boldly announced 
that there was no important or essential difference be- 
tween the old Articles of Confederation and the Consti- 
tution. They were practically the same sort of govern- 
ment ; both compacts or leagues ; the only difference 
being that the Constitution was rather more of a league 
than the articles had been. 

This was certainly desperate and magnificent. He 
actually said that the only difference between the two 
was that in the Articles the State governments had made 
the compact ; it was a union of governments. In the 
Constitution the States themselves had made the com- 
pact ; it was a imion of sovereignties. 

" The confederation was a contract between agents— the 
present Constitution a contract between the principals them- 
selves ; or to take a more analogous case, one is a league made 
by ambassadors ; the other a league made by sovereigns." 
(Works, vol. ii, p. 290.) 

That was the most strained and hair-splitting of all 
his metaphysical efforts. He avoided and dismissed 
from consideration the mass of evidence which showed 
the intention of the framers and adopters of the Con- 
stitution as to what sort of government they thought 
they were creating; and he cited no evidence to show 
that they thought they were adopting his form. He 

326 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

simply, after his manner, started a new assumption; a 
statement as to what the Constitution must in the nature 
of things be, and then began to draw condusions from 
it, the conclusions which suited him. His first con- 
clusion (eminently suited to him) was that sovereignty 
must necessarily reside " in the parts and not in the 
whole " ; that " the parts are the units in such a system, 
and the whole the multiple ; and not the whole the unit 
and the parts the fractions." And so he went on ; for 
now he had everything his own way and could work 
out a wonderful system. 

It was not legal or constitutional reasoning, but the 
old scholasticism ; the system in which you choose your 
conclusion and then select any assumption or adm.ission, 
technically called an axiom, and connect the axiom with 
the conclusion by a chain of reasoning. It was in this 
way that Jonathan Edwards reasoned out in the most 
rigid and logical manner his extraordinary system of 
theology from the single axiom, " everything must have 
a cause." From that same axiom he might also have 
reasoned out any other conclusion he had selected.^ 

It has sometimes been said by Calhoun's admirers 
that Webster was so overwhelmed by Calhoun's argu- 
ment on this occasion, that he attempted no reply to it ; 
and, as a matter of fact, no reply appears in the edition 
of Webster's works published in 185 1. But there was 
a reply, and an excellent one, which is published in the 
Debates.^ Most of it has been already used in criti- 
cisms on Calhoun's argument ; and one sentence of it 
sum«; up all the rest. 

" He is compelled to reject the language of the Constitu- 
tion itself and to reject also the language used by the people 
of every one of the States, when they adopted it, and to lay the 
corner-stone of his whole argument on mere assumption." 

° Such a method of reasoning is about the same at that ai 
the Scotchman who insisted that Shakespeare was a Scotchman. 
When asked how that had happened, he said, " Weel, mon, his 
abeelity cairtainly warrants the supposeetion." 

'Gales and Seaton, vol. ix, Part I, p. 775. 

327 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

In this same debate a speech was made by Senator 
Rives/ of Virginia, which is noteworthy as being a 
forcible statement of a view of the Constitution quite 
generally accepted by Democrats who could not swallow 
Calhoun's doctrine and who were opposed to secession. 
Rives accepted the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, 
but denied that there was any intention or language in 
them favorable to either nullification or secession. They 
were, as a matter of fact, vague; and it was as easy 
to reason as he did, that they justified only protests on 
the part of a State against unconstitutional Acts of 
Congress, as to reason that they justified nullification. 
Rives also accepted Calhoun's first resolution, that the 
Constitution was a compact made by the States ; but he 
argued that having made that compact they were bound 
by it, and the fonn of government made by their com- 
pact was not a league, but a national government which 
admitted of neither nullification nor secession on the part 
of a State. 

To assume, he said, that having made such a com- 
pact as the language of the Constitution describes, any 
one of the States could nullify or withdraw from it, was 
an impossible and unintelligent legal proposition. By 
the compact the States had surrendered a part of their 
original sovereignty to the Union ; they were bound by 
that surrender ; they could not draw back again that 
surrendered sovereignty. He recognized as fully as 
Webster that there was a community and sovereignty 
composed of the people of the United States as distin- 
guished from the separate communities and sovereignties 
called the individual States ; and he showed that Cal- 
houn, before his recent change of ground, had been of 
the same opinion. 

Calhoun's theory that a State, as a party to a com- 
pact composed of equals with no superior to act as 
judge, could at its pleasure withdraw the sovereignty 



^ Gales and Seaton, vol. ix, Part I, p. 494. 

328 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

it had delegated to the Union, was refuted by Rives, 
as a mere attempt to make the question appear to be one 
of principal and agent. 

" But if it were purely a question between South Carolina 
and the General Government. South Carolina alone could not 
resume the powers which had been granted to the latter. She 
is but one out of twenty-four principals, who jointly granted 
these powers ; and she can no more, so far as constitutional 
right is concerned, by her single act, resume the powers thus 
jointly granted than an individual citizen of a State can resume 
the powers jointly granted by himself and the rest of the 
Society to their State Government." (Gales and Seaton. Part 
I, p. 500.) 

The arguments were now all in on the great ques- 
tion of the L^nion and secession, the question over 
which the Civil War was fought ; and since that debate 
in February, 1833, no new arguments have been added. 
The constitutional text-books, speeches and essays which 
have been written since then take their ideas from the 
two great debates, the one in 1830, the other in 1833, 
and have added nothing to the subject. Hayne, Cal- 
houn, Rives and Webster exhausted it. 

All the converts that could be gained by reasoning 
had been gained, and henceforth each party sullenly 
held to its views. The large division of the American 
people who afterwards formed the Republican party of 
the Civil War accepted Webster's reasoning. When 
to these were added the Democrats who' followed the 
reasoning so well stated by Rives, War Democrats, as 
they were called in 1861, the number against nullification 
and secession was a decided majority, as indeed it 
had always been from the day of the adoption of the 
Constitution. 

The people of the South accepted Calhoun's meta- 
physical explanation of the Constitution, and. as we 
know, fought in its defence and sacrificed their lives and 
property for four years. It is still the formally accepted 
doctrine in the South ; but exactly how widely and with 
how much sincerity might be difficult to ascertain. 

329 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

In recent years a curious feeling has sprung up in the 
North, sometimes spoken of as the conciHatory attitude 
towards the South, which goes so far as to say that the 
southern doctrine of the right of a State to secede was 
universally accepted in the early days of the republic, 
and that the southern States which seceded in 1861 were 
acting upon the original understanding. Perhaps the 
briefest and most condensed statement of this feeling 
has been made by Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts. 

" When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of the 
States at Philadelphia and accepted by the votes of States in 
popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man 
in the country from Washington and Hamilton on the one 
side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who 
regarded the new system as -anything but an experiment entered 
upon by the States and from which each and every State had 
the right peaceablj^ to withdraw, a right which was very likely 
to be exercised." (Lodge, Life of Webster, p. 176.) 

To the same effect is the essay, " Constitutional 
Ethics of Secession," by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, \ 
also of Massachusetts, who' commanded a Union regi- 
ment in the Civil War. Both of these gentlemen have 
always been in sympathy with the old Abolition party in 
Massachusetts, which never had any respect for the 
Constitution and would have brushed it aside because 
it protected negro slavery. 

This feeling is extraordinary, could occur perhaps 
only among Am.ericans, and is part, no doubt, of the 
feeling by which General Lee, of the Confederacy, is 
growing in reputation and popularity among northerners 
while Lincoln is becoming more and more admired in 
the South. This curious exchange of heroes, an ex- 
change which could take place only among a great 
people, shows first of all how wisely and well the Civil 
War questions were settled, how naturally united the 
North and South really are, and what remarkable apti- f| 
tude Americans have for settling such terrible difficulties 
in a satisfactory and permanent way. But that part of 

330 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

the feeling which leads to the statement that secession 
was an original right under the Constitution, while most 
creditable to northern good nature, is, nevertheless, an 
historical inaccuracy, if not a monstrosity. It would 
never have occurred if people had resorted for infor- 
.mation to the original debates of Congress instead of 
relying on suppositions and guesses or brief individual 
statements that do not go over the whole ground. 

This notion, that before the Civil War no one denied 
the right of a State peacefully to withdraw from the 
L^nion, or that there was an understanding to that efifect, 
has been supposed to receive much support from an old 
law book (" Rawle on the Constitution," first pub- 
lished in 1825) which inculcated the doctrine of the right 
of secession, and was, it was alleged, a text-book at the 
West Point Military Academy, where Lee, Jefferson 
Davis and other leaders of the Confederacy were stu- 
dents. If the government of the Union in its own mili- 
tary academy taught secession to the officers of its 
army, it could not afterwards, it w^as said, find very 
much fault w'ith them for an attempt to break up the 
Union. Certainly a government that would deliberately, 
for any length of time, teach its own destruction to its 
officials, would be an anomaly in history. 

Close investigation, however, has shown that Rawle 
on the Constitution was used at the Military Academy 
for only one year, immediately after its publication, and 
for only the graduating class of that year. Jefferson 
Davis, who graduated in 1827, said that Kent's Commen- 
taries, a work teaching consolidation of the Union, was 
the text-book at that time, and it so continued until 
i876.« 

Rawle was merely one of the minority of that time 
who favored secession. His argument so far as he 
gives it in his book inspires no respect. He had appa- 
rently made no investigation of the history of the Con- 

' See Colonel Latta's excellent pamphlet, " Was Secession 
Taught at West Point," pp. 32-37. 

331 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

stitution, of the way in which it was adopted, or even of 
its language. His argument is hke Calhoun's, a meta- 
physical one, based not on what the Constitution actually 
is by its own words and by the intention and language of 
the people who adopted it, but on what he should pre- 
sume the Constitution must be on general principles. 

" To deny this right (of secession) would be inconsistent 
with the principles upon which our political systems are 
founded, and which is, that the people have in all cases a right 
to determine how they will be governed. This right must be 
considered as an ingredient in the original composition of the 
general government, which, though not expressed, was mutually 
understood. ... It was also known though it was not 
avowed that a State might withdraw itself." 

In other words, he admits that the Constitution itself 
does not, by its language, give the right of secession, 
but that such a right, " though not expressed, was mut- 
ually understood," outside of the instrument ; and " must 
be considered an ingredient " of it. Such a method 
of reasoning is not legal ; it is not reasoning at all, but 
mere vagueness and supposition. To assert without 
proof a secret understanding that a law shall be other- 
wise than it expresses itself is a method by which any 
statute, document or constitution could be readily de- 
stroyed. In the appendix to his book, though professing 
to reprint the Constitution entire, he leaves out the 
preamble which describes the Constitution as established 
by " We the people of the United States." 

So far as there was any understanding at the time of 
the adoption of the Constitution, it was that the instru- 
ment consolidated the Union and prevented secession. 
In Pennsylvania Findlay objected to accepting the Con- 
stitution because it " amounted to a consolidation 
and not a confederation of States. Wilson recom- 
mended it because it was " not a compact," but " an 
ordinance, an establishment of the people." Patrick 
Henry in Virginia objected to it because it was "a 
consolidated national government and not a compact." 

332 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

Mason objected to it because " having once consented 
to it we cannot recede from it." Two of the delegates 
from New York withdrew from the convention because 
the Constitution as framed by the majority was a " con- 
solidation of the United States in one government." 
In Maryland, Luther Martin, who had been a member 
of the convention, objected because it created a national 
government and weakened the States. In Virginia and 
in New York it was proposed to ratify the Constitution 
on condition that if certain changes in it were not made 
the States would have the right to secede. But this 
conditional ratification could not be passed and the con- 
vention voted to accept the Constitution unconditionally. 
In the newspaper essays written by Hamilton, Madison 
and Jay, the Constitution is recommended for adoption 
because it is an establishment of government and not a 
compact or confederacy. All these historical facts point 
to a general understanding, not that a State could 
secede, but that secession was impossible except by 
violence and revolution.^ 

A brief summary of all the various doctrines of 
Union and disunion may be found useful. 

1. The Right of Revolution, set forth in the Declaration of 
Independence and never denied or questioned in America. An 
inalienable right of all communities to overthrovir a government 
or Constitution which has become intolerable. 

2. The Historical Doctrine of Indissoluble Union as main- 
tained by the majority of the Convention that framed the Con- 
stitution, announced by the Convention in their circular letter 
submitting the Constitution for adoption by the States, urged 
by the minority as an objection to the Constitution at the time 
of its adoption, maintained by the authors of the Federalist, 
enlarged and expounded by Webster and confirmed by the 
Civil War. This doctrine holds that the Constitution was not 
a league, compact or confederation, but a government, a con- 

* Hare, Constitutional Law, vol. i, pp. 73-85 ; Elliott's 
Debates (2nd Ed., 1876), vol. i, pp. 359-395, vol. ii, pp. ill, 
112, 261, 607-627, vol. iii, pp. 630, 656; Latta, "Was Secession 
Taught at West Point," pp. 16-22. 

333 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

solidated union ; that it was formed by the people of the States 
and not by the State Governments ; that it was intended to 
remedy the defects of the old Articles of Confederation by 
creating a government that would act on individuals, that is 
on the people, not on the States ; that the Constitution describes 
itself as a government and not as a league or confederacy, 
limits the powers of the States, makes acts of Congress the 
supreme law of the land, and the Supreme Court and Congress 
the interpreters of the Constitution. No State under this 
doctrine has the right to nullify acts of Congress or peaceably 
secede ; and the Union can be broken only by revolution and 
the sword. 

3. The Theory of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 
that the Union and the Constitution having been created by 
the States, and, there being no judge or umpire to settle dis- 
putes, each State, 'in cases of palpable and dangerous violations 
of the Constitution, is entitled to decide for itself the mode and 
measure of redress. This theory disposed of the historical facts 
and circumstances at the time of the framing and adoption of 
the Constitution and also the Constitution's description of the 
government and the Union by ignoring them and saying nothing 
about them; and probably this Virginia and Kentucky theory 
meant no more than the Right of Revolution. 

4. The Hartford Convention Theory that the Union could 
be dissolved either by the right of revolution or by " equitable 
arrangement," that is by all the States agreeing to dissolve it. 
A self-evident proposal, hardly amounting to a theory. 

5. The Hayne Theory, that the Constitution was nothing 
more than a compact, contract or agreement made by the 
States as parties, and that the General Government thus 
created was another party to the contract. All parties being 
equal sovereigns, and there being no common arbiter, each 
State had the right to decide when the compact had been 
violated and could annul, so far" as herself was concerned, any 
acts of Congress deemed unconstitutional, and forbid and 
prevent them being enforced within her borders. This theory 
was based on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ; but the 
part of it which made the General Government a party to the 
compact was generally regarded as an absurdity and never 
maintained by anyone but Hayne. 

6. The Calhoun or Metaphysical Theorv, the same in out- 
line as Hayne's, but without making the General Government 
a party to the compact, and supported by arguments different 
from Havne's. It ignores the Constitution's description of 
itself and the historical circumstances at the framing and 
adoption of the Constitution as irrelevant, and argues that in 

334 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

the nature of things the Constitution must necessarily be a 
league of States with the right of each State to decide for 
itself when the Constitution has been violated (i) because in 
the nature of things it is impossible to conceive of a division 
of power without an equal right in each to judge of the extent 
of the power allotted to each, (2) because the words union, 
federal, united, imply a combination of sovereignties, not an 
association of individuals, (3) because sovereignty is in its 
nature indivisible, and therefore each of the States must have 
retained its sovereignty and cannot have surrendered it or its 
final right to decide to the General Government, (4) because 
this method of each State retaining its right of self-protection 
and its right to nullify unconstitutional acts of Congress and 
forbid their enforcement within its borders will prevent 
tyranny and make the most perfect of all unions from which 
there will be no desire to break away. This theory is said to 
be still nominally held by many people in the Southern States. 

7. The Rives or Virginia Theory accepted the Virginia 
and Kentucky Resolutions, not as justifying nullification or 
secession, but as justifying only protests by a State against 
unconstitutional acts of Congress. This theory admitted that 
the Constitution was a compact between the States ; but having 
made that compact the States were bound by it, and the form 
of government created by the compact was not a league, but a 
national government, which admitted neither of nullification 
nor secession on the part of a State. This was a favorite 
doctrine with the Union or War Democrats in 1861. 

8. The Secret Understanding. An unavowed, tacit under- 
standing " not expressed but mutually understood," that a State 
had the right to secede. This idea was mentioned in Rawle's 
book on the Constitution published in 1825 ; and is similar to 
the statement frequently made in the South that in spite of 
anything in the Constitution it was understood that if the 
South could not honorably remain in the Union she would be 
allowed peaceably to secede. As it ignores law, facts and the 
words of the Constitution and is a mere verbal improbable 
statement of an impression or understanding it is hardly 
arguable. 

9. The Abolitionist Theory. This ignored the historical 
circumstances of the framing and adoption of the Constitution 
as irrelevant and held that the Constitution contained from the 
beginning an immoral and inhuman compact or agreement 
guaranteeing the existence of slavery in the Southern States, 
and guaranteeing the return of fugitive slaves, that no one 
was bound by an immoral compact, and therefore it would 'be 
better to break up the already invalid union, separate from 

335 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the Southern States and form a Northern confederacy free 
from any guarantees about slavery except absolute freedom to 
the slave. This theory was, of course, abandoned after the 
Civil War, except by the Abolitionist historians who sometimes 
accept the Secret Understanding and maintain that before the 
Civil War secession was supposed to be allowable. The radical 
position the Abolitionists took with regard to slavery made it 
difficult for them to accept the historical circumstances of the 
adoption of the Constitution making an indissoluble Union, 
because an indissoluble Union made slavery legal under the 
Constitution. 

But we are passing beyond the real subject in hand 
and must return to what happened in the Senate after 
Webster and Calhoun had finished their arguments. 
The advantage seemed decidedly with Webster and 
Jackson. One had proved South Carolina wrong and 
the other was ready to stop nullification and secession, 
nip them in the bud by force if South Carolina really 
meant to resist by force. This was the feeling of many 
people and Webster was of the same mind, and prepared 
to let things take their natural course under the Force 
Bill. But others were alarmed at the prospect of bring- 
ing the question to such an issue. They seem tO' have 
really thought not only that the whole idea of a protec- 
tive tariff was in danger of being abolished forever by 
the opposition of South Carolina, but that that State, 
unless appeased, would start a rebellion throughout the 
whole South which could not be stopped by the rest of 
the country, and would break up the Union. 

Henry Clay, who was now in the Senate, took this 
view, took upon himself to represent and act for the 
people who held it, and he came forward with a new 
measure of a kind for which he was already famous 
and in which he profoundly believed. In his mind the 
increasing danger of secession and disunion must be 
checked, not by bringing it to a head and fighting it out, 
once for all, but by compromises. In 1820 he had 
secured the passage of the Missouri Compromise which 
checked the northward extension of slavery and quieted 

336 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

the slavery agitation for twenty-five years. He now 
brought forward his second compromise measure, which 
was a bill gradually to reduce the rates of the protective 
tariff every two years until in 1842, when the rates 
having been all brought down to twenty per cent, ad 
valorem, that rate should be continued. This, he said, 
would remove the grievance, the so-called unfairness 
of the tariff, of which the Carolinians complained, save 
the Union, and at the same time save the tariff itself and 
the principle of protection, which otherwise might be 
swept away at this or the next session. 

This bill, it will be observed, practically abandoned 
the principle of protection. It enacted a tariff for 
revenue only and by reducing all duties to the same level 
abandoned that discriinination in favor of special indus- 
tries which is said to be " the only true and practical 
mode of protection." The bill was acceptable to a 
majority in both Houses of Congress. Many who dis- 
liked protection saw in the scare about nullification a 
good chance to get rid of the tariff; and they did not 
mind encouraging the nullifiers by yielding to them. 
Clay's bill known as the " Compromise tariff " became 
a law ; and it w^as many years before the protective 
tariff was restored. 

Calhoun had placed himself in an awkward position ; 
and if events had taken their course, as Webster was 
willing they should, Calhoun might have been in a 
dangerous position ; for there is no telling what old 
Jackson in his wrath might not have done with him. 
Calhoun understood this, and sought, it is said, the 
assistance of Clay, with whom he had not been on speak- 
ing terms for many years. 

That Henry Clay, the father and creator of the 
American protective tariff system, from whose speeches 
all subsequent advocates of protection, the world over, 
! have drawn their arguments, should, in the year 1833, 
have become so frightened by the South Carolina nulli- 
fiers as to kill his own pet system, was certainly a rather 
22 337 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER ' 

curious event in our political history. He said he did 
it to save the tariff ; but it is rather difficult to discover 
in what respect he saved it or that it needed saving. 
He said he did it to save the Union from dissolution ; 
but instead of tending to save the Union, he probably 
went a long way in encouraging the formation of the 
Southern Confederacy which brought on the Civil War 
of 1861. 

Webster was deeply disappointed in Clay. He had 
relied on him to support the Constitution and the Union. 
He had written him a letter a couple of years before, 
urging him to come back to the Senate, where his services 
would soon be needed on the right side. It has been 
said that Clay wanted to curry favor with the South 
and gain votes for his insatiable desire for the Presi- 
dency ; that finding many in favor of compromise he 
took up the idea because, as things were, Webster 
and Jackson seemed likely to have a great triumph over 
the nullifiers and such a triumph might draw off Clay's 
followers to Webster, and possibly give him the nomi- 
nation for the Presidency. The first draft of the com- 
promise tariff bill which he handed about among poli- 
ticians for examination contained an explicit renuncia- 
tion of the right of Congress, and pledged that body 
not to pass any measures for internal improvements or 
the protection of manufacturing industries. Finding 
that his friends were not prepared to go so far, he 
struck out that part of the bill.^° 

So he was ready, it seems, to sacrifice everything 
to the South ; and even when restrained by his followers 
he sacrificed a great deal. It was a great triumph 
for Calhoun and the Carolina nullifiers. They were 
entirely satisfied. Congress had yielded to their threat 
to nullify its laws and had withdrawn the laws of which 
they had complained. This was in exact accord with 
Calhoun's theory. He had said that he loved the Union, 

"Webster, Works, vol. xvii, p. 557; vol. xvi, pp. 213, 228, 
293. 294, 391. 

338 



NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE 

that he did not want to dissolve it, and that the way 
to prevent its dissolution was for Congress not to pass 
laws injurious to a particular section ; if such laws were 
passed the section injured had under the Constitution the 
right to nullify them unless, as in this instance, Congress 
should recognize that right by wisely withdrawing the 
laws, 

Webster was profoundly disgusted. If Clay's motive 
was to cut Webster and Jackson out of a triumph he 
certainly succeeded. It would have been Jackson's one 
really useful act, one instance where his violence would 
have been of benefit to his country, if he had been 
allowed to go on and crush nullification by force. For 
some years Webster had been convinced that the plan 
of a southern confederacy had been received with favor 
by a great many of the political men of the South. He 
was for nipping it in the bud, and crushing it in Jack- 
sonian fashion, without the slightest compromise or 
yielding to this first practical exhibition of it in South 
Carolina. He made against Clay's tariff bill what was 
probably a very interesting speech ; but as it was against 
the leader of a faction of his own party, he was induced 
not to publish it for the sake of saving appearances.^^ 
He afterwards regretted that he had yielded to this 
i request. 

He supported the Force Bill and it was passed. The 
plan of the Clay and Calhoun compromise seems to have 
been to settle the difficulty by passing both bills, the 
one yielding to the nullifiers, the other threaten- 
ing them. But after the tariff bill was passed, 
yielding all that the nullifiers demanded, and they had 
rescinded their ordinance of nullification in March of 
that year, the Force Bill was a superfluity. There was 
lothing for it to act upon ; and the rising generation of 
;he South was led to believe in both the practical effi- 
cacy as well as the theoretical soundness of the doctrines 
of secession. 



Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 294. 

339 



XIII 



1 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS, AND A CHANCE FOR 

THE PRESIDENCY g 

It was about this time that the National RepubHcans 
took the name of Whigs. It was the time-honored Eng- 
hsh term for those who opposed the king and upheld 
the cause of liberty, and the Republicans regarded them- 
selves as opposing the tyrant Jackson. The nullifiers 
also took the same name, because they also regarded 
themselves as upholding the original liberty and inde- 
pendence of the States against both Jackson and Feder- 
alists like Webster. j 

The name Whig was not of much assistance to the 
Republicans. Clay's escapade with the tariff and other 
circumstances involved them in confusion and factions 
for many years ; and in the next Presidential election 
they did not nominate a candidate for the Presidency. 

Webster's position in politics was now a peculiar one. , 
He had opposed President Jackson's veto of the United ' 
States Bank charter and was certainly not in sympath)' , 
with most of the President's plans and theories. Bui ■ 
on the question of nullification the two men were ir 
perfect accord. Jackson personally thanked Webstei 
for supporting the administration on the occasion of th( 
Force Bill. Other members of the Democratic part^ 
who took the same view as the President on that subjec 
went out of their way to make themselves agreeable t 
Webster and to show their gratitude and admiration. \ 

When Congress adjourned in the spring of that yeaj 
1833, Webster made a tour of the West as far as Ohiq 
Everywhere the people flocked to see him. He wa' 
given dinners and banquets and made speeches. Th 
enthusiasm for him was entirely outside of factions an 
party lines, although that was a time of very bitter part 

340 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

divisions in the West. " Mr. Webster," said the 
National Intelligencer, " has wrought Httle less than a 
miracle upon the party feuds and divisions of the west- 
ern country. He has fairly extinguished the one and 
obliterated the other." He was accepted as an Ameri- 
can who had stood for an undivided country ; as an ora- 
tor and a statesman of whose talents alone every one 
without regard to party might be proud. It shows how 
strong in the North and West was the Union senti- 
ment as well as to what an exalted and unusual position 
above party lines Webster's peculiar ability had raised 
him. 

In fact, he was becoming so very popular among the 
western Democrats that many of their eastern brethren 
were jealous and rather resented his friendliness, or, as 
they thought, too great influence with President Jack- 
son. The President, through Mr. Livingston, who had 
been his secretary of state, intimated that he hoped Mr. 
Webster would continue his support. A Democratic 
Senator handed a list of applicants for an office to Web- 
ster and asked him to look it over. This was a great 
token of confidence under the Jacksonian spoils system. 
But Webster declined the honor. He wished to be 
under no obligations to the President ; he was by no 
means prepared to become a Democrat ; and much 
preferred his very illustrious distinction of independence. 

He knew that there could be no real or lasting 
alliance between himself and Jackson ; and he knew that 
a question would soon be raised on which they would 
be very far apart ; for it was generally known in Wash- 
ington that Jackson intended to remove the government 
deposits from the Bank of the United States, the renewal 
of whose charter he had vetoed the year before. 

Jackson and his friends could see in the Bank only an 
immense moneyed power with such practical control of 
the currency of the country that it might become as 
powerful as the government and be used for dangerous 
purposes. In his fierce hostility to it he was not content 

341 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

with vetoing the renewal of its charter and allowing it 
to die a natural death when the old charter expired in 
1836. He believed that it had entered the political 
field and had used its vast wealth and influence to pre- 
vent his re-election. He wanted to wreak his vengeance 
on it at once ; and the most terrible blow he could inflict, 
now that he had been re-elected, was to direct his 
secretary of the treasury after a certain date to leave 
no more of the government funds on deposit with it. 
It had been created to receive those deposits. To re- 
move them would, he thought, kill it at once, and it 
would be incapable of harm either to him or to the 
country during the four years that remained of its old 
charter. 

The Bank had been eminently successful during its 
whole existence. It had safely guarded the government 
deposits, acted as fiscal agent of the government, kept 
the paper currency at par, facilitated exchange and pre- 
vented the necessity of moving great masses of specie 
from one part of the country to the other. The busi- 
ness of the country, both agricultural and commercial, 
was at that time particularly prosperous, the veto of 
the renewal of the Bank charter had not seriously 
affected it. But the sudden removal from the Bank of 
$8,000,000 of government deposits, an enormous sum in j 
those days, before it could wind up its affairs in a 
regular way, brought on a most disastrous financial j 
panic, deranged all the other banks of the country, and ' 
spread ruin on all sides. Jackson's own followers were 
aghast at the result, and if the work were to be done 
over again would, Webster said, have restrained their 
hero. They now, however, glibly laid the blame on the 
Bank itself for all the distress. It had, they said, cur- 
tailed its loans and deliberately brought on the panic 
to extort a renewal of its charter from the fears of the 
people. The Bank, it is too true, had curtailed its loans, 
and had been obliged to curtail them, because of the 
attacks upon it, because of the veto of its recharter, and. 
because the public money had been withdrawn. 

342 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

They may have been right in desiring to bring the 
Bank to an end and not let it continue indefinitely. But 
they should have brought it to an end gradually and 
given time to Congress and public opinion to develop 
as a substitute some one of the other systems accom- 
plishing the same results, which they could immediately 
put in its place to carry on its work. But this was 
not Jackson's method. He had no way but that of 
sudden violence. So now, when the Bank had, as he 
thought, opposed his imperious will, he knew of no 
method but of rushing on it with all the injury he could 
inflict. 

The friendly messages and the attempt to put Web- 
ster under obligations were evidently intended to secure 
his assistance when the clash with the Bank should come. 
But it was absolutely out of the question to delude the 
conservative Webster into such a wild plan. The crash 
came, Jackson's secretary of the treasury, Duane, would 
not remove the deposits. Jackson dismissed him and 
appointed in his place Mr. Taney, afterwards chief 
justice, who was sufficiently complying in character to 
be the President's tool, and the deposits were stopped in 
September, 1833. 

The only substitute for the Bank that Jackson and 
his friends had devised was to deposit the public money 
in certain State banks scattered over the country and try 
to organize them to act together as the fiscal agent of 
the government; to make, in short, a league of banks to 
take the place of the Bank of the United States. It was 
a plan concocted by the President and his advisers alone 
without public discussion or the advantage of debate 
among the able financial minds of the country. It 
afterwards required nearly ten years for the statesmen 
of the country to work out the modern sub-treasury 
plan under which the money of the general government 
is not deposited in any bank, but kept in the hands 
of the collecting officers in different parts of the 
country under bonds, v.'ho pay over the money when 
ordered by the Treasury Department at Washington. 

343 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

But Jackson, in his backwoods ignorance and con- 
ceit, thought himself competent to settle the whole 
matter off-hand by means of that plain commonsense 
of ignorant people which had been so much talked of 
in his party. 

When he stopped the deposits there was no law 
authorizing the placing of them in State banks. The 
only law on the subject authorized the placing of them 
in the Bank of the United States. In substituting his 
own will for the law, Jackson characteristically created 
a system in which he was to select the favored State 
banks. In other words, the whole money power of 
the government was brought into his hands, to be con- 
trolled by him without any regulation of law. He had 
not in any sense separated the government from bank- 
ing institutions, but had created an arrangement as 
fully capable of being used for corrupt purposes as the 
Bank of the United States. 

Such a stupid substitute had not the slightest effect 
in averting the financial panic which instantly foUow^ed 
the removal of the deposits. The disasters were wide 
and far-reaching. The State banks were not in any 
sense like the national banks of our time, whose notes 
are secured by United States bonds deposited at Wash- 
ington. The State banks were mere State corporations, 
often with little or no capital and no definite or legal 
security except the ability or cunning of their managers. 
Many of them were " wild-cat banks," — that is to say, 
they bought up cheaply printed bills which they issued 
under their name and used for buying western land. 
Having bought the land for this depreciated money, 
they sold the land for good money, hoping that their 
own bills would not come back to them for redemption. 
If too many of the bills came back the bank failed, and 
its managers went somewhere else and started another 
one. 

Such was the crudity of American finance in those 
days of no national banks, no sub-treasury plan for keep- 

344 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

ing the government funds ; and now that the United 
States Bank was about to pass away, nothing but the 
State banks with only such security as their managers 
chanced to have. Of course, all the State banks were 
not wild-cats. Here and there, especially in old com- 
munities, there were conservative institutions ; and Jack- 
son sent out agents to find out which they were. But 
the best of them were apparently none too good. Of 
those selected by the President not a few lost their 
heads by the possession of so much money, and were 
led into all manner of speculations which entailed a 
long series of losses and depression upon the communi- 
ties in which they were situated. 

The intelligent lawyers and educated men of the 
President's party were in the position of the man who 
had the bear by the tail. He dared not let go and it 
was dangerous to hold on. They invented ingenious 
theories for the President and the infatuated masses 
that supported him. They explained that the real inten- 
tion was to have nothing but specie as the money of the 
country ; and to accomplish this by destroying the 
United States Bank, making use of the State banks for 
a while, and then destroying them, so that there would 
be no wicked banks of any kind and the dear people 
would have as money nothing but pure and honest gold 
and silver, as in the ideal ages which had existed at 
some time no one knew exactly when. One of Web- 
ster's most useful speeches was his ridicule of this 
after-thought to account for the President's fury, and 
his luminous exposition of the absolute necessity in 
modern civilization of banks of some sort and of a 
mixed currency, partly specie and partly paper re- 
deemable in specie. He had a most happy faculty for 
explaining all these functions of finance ; and it is un- 
fortunate that the limits of this book forbid lengthy 
quotations. 

When driven from every other defence of their 
chief, the followers of Jackson finally said that his 

345 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

financial methods constituted an experiment, which he 
and they were making. This vagueness was perhaps 
the best defence they could have made ; for the principal 
value of an experiment is often that it shows what ought 
not to be done. In that respect Jackson eminently suc- 
ceeded. Webster seized eagerly on this admission of an 
experiment, and it will be found used in his speeches 
with telling sarcasm. 

But all the President's palpable mistakes, and all 
the disasters, the corruption of the spoils system, and 
the financial ruin could not shake the faith of the great 
Democratic majority in the supposed mysterious wis- 
dom of "Old Hickory." The reasoning of high intellects, 
like Clay and Webster, was futile against him. Thou- 
sands who saw his mistakes and disapproved of his 
acts could not bring themselves to oppose him, because 
of the widespread superstition that the hero of New 
Orleans must be right, and even when doing wrong 
would bring it out right in the end. It was another 
instance to show how our people, in spite of their natural 
shrewdness and ability, can at times be taken in by mere 
fakers. 

When Webster returned in December, 1833, to his 
place in the Senate, with the full flood of financial dis- 
aster in the form of letters, complaints and petitions, 
pouring in as the result of the removal of the deposits, 
his task as chairman of the committee on finance was a 
heavy one. His duties and position as a public man 
were becoming more burdensome than ever with less 
prospect of favorable results. Nothing seemed to be 
accomplished; nothing seemed possible of accomplish- 
ment in the face of the infatuation of the people and 
Congress for Jackson. The disasters brought upon the 
country under Democratic rule seemed as if they might 
give the Whigs some chance of securing the Presidency 
or a majority in the Congress ; but there were as yet no 
signs of it. 

The memorials and petitions which flooded Congress 

346 



.V* 





Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Company 

GENERAL JACKSON WITH THE HERMITAGE IN THE BACKGROUND 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

demanded as a remedy for the general commercial dis- 
tress that the deposits be at once returned to the Bank 
of the United States, to remain there at least until the 
Bank's charter expired in 1836. Some of these memo- 
rials were brought to Washington by deputations of 
citizens from various parts of the country, who called 
on the President to lay before him the situation and 
implore him to restore the deposits. They were re- 
ceived with outbursts of Jacksonian rage and wild 
denunciations of the Bank and its president, Nicholas 
Biddle. Jackson would pace the room while he stormed 
against the Bank which he declared was the cause of all 
the trouble. " Insolvent, do you say ? What do you 
come to me for then ? Go to Nicholas Biddle. He has 
all the money." 

" Why am I teased with committees ? Here I am receiv- 
ing two or three anonymous letters every day threatening me 
with assassination if I don't restore the deposits and recharter 
the bank — the abominable institution — the monster that has 
grown up out of circumstances, and has attempted to control 
the government. I've got my foot upon it, and I'll crush it. 
Am I to violate my constitutional oath? Is it to be expected 
that I am to be turned from my purpose? Is Andrew Jackson 
to bow the knee to the golden calf as did the Israelites of old? 
I tell you if you want relief go to Nicholas Biddle." (Parton, 
Life of Jackson, vol. iii, p. 552.) 

These outbursts of rage were deliberately posed ; 
for when published they were found very effective with 
the masses, who, in their infatuation, considered them 
additional proof of the heroic honesty of " Old Hick- 
ory " and his devotion to the people's rights. After one 
of these fine outbursts to a deputation, and the deputa- 
tion had departed, Jackson sent a messenger to bring 
back the spokesman, who found " Old Hickory " laugh- 
ing over the result. " Did not I manage them well ? " 
he exclaimed. He had actually called back the spokes- 
man for the mere pleasure of a chuckle with him over 
the scene. 

347 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Here is another that went the rounds of the news- 
papers, to the great edification of his followers : 

" In the name of God, Sir ! what do the people think to 
gain by sending their memorials here? If they send ten thou- 
sand of them signed by all the men, women and children in 
the land and bearing the names of all on the gravestones, I 
will not relax a particle from my position." (Parton, Life of 
Jackson, vol. iii, p. 553.) 

In Congress the President's defenders, like Benton, 
attributed all the panic and financial disaster to the 
secret and wicked contrivances of the monster Bank ; 
and thousands of deluded people actually believed this, 
and sent memorials to Congress approving of the re- 
moval of the deposits. The Whigs denounced the re- 
jmoval and demanded that the deposits be at once 
restored. Calhoun, now completely alienated from the 
President, attacked him in strained and artificial oratory, 
as a public thief, not a bold, warlike plunderer, but a 
sneaking pilferer who' had robbed the treasury. Clay, 
with more eloquence and with all his old-time felicity 
of language, bewailed the fate of his bleeding constitu- 
tion and country in the hands of a man who set all 
laws and constitutions at defiance. After reading his 
speech " Old Hickory " exclaimed, " Oh, if I live to 
get these robes of office off me, I will bring the rascal 
to a dear account." 

The majority in the Lower House was Vv^ith the 
President; but in the Senate it was slightly against 
him. To the Whigs the financial distress and con- 
fusion seemed likely to be endless so long as the crude 
arrangement continued of allowing the deposits to re- 
main in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury or 
the President to be put in this bank or that, or in no 
bank at all, without any regulation of law. 

If Jackson had contented himself with vetoing on 
reasonable grounds the renewal of the Bank's charter, 
let it wind up its affairs in the next four years, and 
meanwhile quietly discussed other methods of public 
finance, it is probable that comparatively little harm 

348 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

would have been done. But to cause one panic by 
wrecking the Bank suddenly by the removal of the 
deposits, and then a series of panics by his lawless pet 
bank schemes, besides demoralizing half the nation by 
his lawless reasons and inflammatory appeals to class 
hatred, was — well, it was the natural method of his 
temperament and his extreme ignorance of all such 
things. His intellect extended very little farther than 
mere cunning. 

The subject of the removal of the deposits was 
debated almost every day in Congress from December 
to June. Webster spoke sixty-four times, and probably 
never did such heavy and long-continued work for any 
other cause, legal or political. Such a long and arduous 
debate over an event that should never have happened, 
that only a madman could have committed, seems now 
like an extraordinary waste of time and energy. But, 
no doubt, the debate in the end had its educational value. 
Webster and the Whigs exerted themselves, they felt 
bound to put forward almost superhuman exertions to 
save the business interests of the country from absolute 
ruin, to reveal to the people the Jackscnian fallacies of 
finance. Their speeches read now like very unneces- 
sary attempts to explain the evident, but they were 
necessary at the time. The Democrats labored to save 
their party by upholding Jackson and attacking the 
Bank. 

The Whigs always held fast to their faith in the 
Bank as the only salvation for American finance. With- 
out our experience with the sub-treasury plan and our 
system of national banks scattered over the country, 
they very naturally clung to the great institution which 
had brought order out of chaos, and steadied the coun- 
try's currency and business methods for so many years. 
In reality the debate in Congress was continued through- 
out the Union for over ten years afterwards, or until the 
sub-treasury plan was finally adopted in 1846. The 
masses of our people have always been ver}^ slow to 

349 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

learn governmental finance, as witness our flounderings 
in the silver and greenback crazes. 

The majority in the Senate against the administra- 
tion passed Henry Clay's resolution censuring both the 
President and Secretary for violating the Constitution 
and the laws in the removal of the deposits. This 
brought on another scene of violence with Jackson, and 
another long and useless debate. He sent to the Senate 
a protest against their resolution. The Protest was a 
very famous document in its day, prepared for him by 
some lawyer of his party, and accompanied by a demand 
that it be entered on the journal of the Senate. In 
other words, the Senate was ordered by the President 
to enter the whole protest upon their journal as a re- 
buke to themselves which they had accepted. The Czar 
of Russia would hardly attempt to go farther in control 
of a legislature. Such an attempt to muzzle the Senate 
and say that as a representative and legislative body 
they should not pass a resolution expressing their opin- 
ion of Presidential action, and that they must enter a 
rebuke for it on their minutes, seems now so ridiculous 
as hardly to deserve notice. It was going the length 
of saying that if the Senate should see the President 
borrowing money on the credit of the United States, 
issuing commissions to office, enlisting troops, or mak- 
ing war or peace without authority, they could not say 
so without his permission. 

But in the condition of things at that time, the ex- 
traordinary infatuation of a majority of the people for 
Jackson, and his wonderful power and influence, the 
Protest was regarded by the Whigs as a very serious 
matter. There was only a majority of four or five 
against it in the Senate, and it was feared that the 
absurd despotism of the Protest might become a prece- 
dent and destroy the balance of the government by 
altering the relations between the Senate and the Execu- 
tive. Four votes, one way or the other, would settle it. 

Webster and his party felt that they were fighting 

350 



THE REAIOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

for a great principle. In the extreme Democratic ex- 
citement of the last few years the Senate had become 
unpopular. There were people extreme enough to wish 
to see it depressed or crippled. " It is already de- 
nounced," said Webster, " as independent of the people 
and aristocratic." In the animated debate on the Pro- 
test the unusual spectacle was presented of the Senate 
defending itself and its right to an opinion against the 
aggressions of the President. Such a situation was 
surely another tribute to the popularity and power of 
Jackson. 

Webster's speech against the Protest is the only one 
of this long debate which posterity has been inclined to 
regard as of any permanent value ; and it is now known 
principally from one or two famous passages of elo- 
quence in it. Finding that no one seemed prepared 
to give a lawyer-like answer to the wild principles of 
constitutional law which the President was trying to 
establish, Webster took the task upon himself. He 
writes to his old friend Mason, that no one has as yet 
really answered the President, and he supposes that he 
must do it. 

By ingenious subtleties and distorted quotations the 
Protest had maintained the principles that the Senate 
could not by resolution express its opinion that the 
President had violated the law or the Constitution ; that 
such a resolution was an attempt to try and convict 
the President without the form of an impeachment; 
that the public money, like all other public property, is 
necessarily in the control of the President; that Con- 
gress cannot take out of the executive department the 
custody of the public property without an assumption 
of executive power ; that the President was essentially 
the guardian of the public property and the Constitu- 
tion, and responsible for the conduct of every person 
employed in the government. In other words, as Web- 
ster said, there was but one officer in the whole govern- 
ment. The President was everybody. He was the 

351 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

State, and the Government of the United States had 
become extremely simple. There were no more checks 
and balances and complications. 

It hardly now seems necessary to take the trouble 
to destroy Jackson's argument. But it was necessary 
at that time. The Protest had taken quite a hold on the 
masses. That part of it which described the resolution \ 
of the Senate as an attempt to convict the President ' 
without the form of an impeachment trial was a very 
clever Jacksonian pose for popular feeling, and led the 
Democracy to think that the innocent " old hickory " 
hero was being unfairly treated and unjustly tried. 
Then it was " hurrah for Jackson," and the hats were 
thrown up. They did not see that the denial of the 
right of the Senate to pass such a resolution was a 
denial of its right to express an opinion on public 
questions. 

The cunning pose of the whole Protest was that 
" Old Hickory," more than any other department of 
government, represented the people, and that in order 
to protect their interests he must have charge and con- 
trol of everything, and no one must interfere with 
him. To carry out this idea the Protest had set forth 
most astounding principles, at which most of the Sena- 
tors were aghast, and could only storm and rage at them 
in general language until Webster by his cool, dispassion- 
ate analysis pricked the bubbles in detail, and gave 
reasons which could be accepted by the most intelligent I 
minds. 

It was curious that the Democratic party, the oppo- 
nents of strong government, the supposed enemies of 
despotism, the party of strict construction. State rights, 
and weak nationality, should have gone over, body, soul 
and spirit, to the control of a man despotic in both 
opinion and practice, the loosest and vaguest construc- 
tionist of the Constitution that has ever been known, 
an opponent to the death of State rights, nullification 
and secession, and who attempted to centre the whole 

352 



1 



THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 

national government in himself and assume more power 
than any European monarch outside of Russia dared to 
grasp. 

It seems now hard to believe that the Protest, even if 
accepted by the Senate in 1834, could ever have become 
a precedent in the sense that its crude doctrines would 
have become a part of recognized constitutional inter- 
pretation. At any rate, it was not accepted, and pos- 
terity has no doubt had the less difficulty in rejecting its 
errors because of that beautifully cogent reasoning of 
Webster's, that detailed reasoning which was always 
such a delight to Chief Justice Alarshall and Judge 
Story. Strong speeches were made against the Protest 
by Senators like Poindexter, Ewing, Calhoun, Clay and 
Bibb. But all of them were mere violent attacks or 
somewhat vague denunciation. They had neither the 
eloquence, the literary perfection in words, nor that 
detailed reasoning close to the admitted facts, which is 
the really valuable thing in the end ; and which in the 
case of this speech of Webster's has long ago passed 
into the text-books and the decisions of courts. 

It was not one of his long, tremendous orations ; but 
was one of his best ; a keen, brilliant little piece of well- 
balanced oratory, complete in itself, and leading up to a 
strong conclusion. There are several passages in it 
which are still often quoted, though few know the speech 
from which they are taken. The fine description of the 
sentinel on the watch tower of liberty, and the descrip- 
tion of the spirit of liberty, are both in this speech, 
and also the passage on the British empire which 
occurred immediately after the almost equally famous 
passage on the American Revolution. Pie had been 
insisting on the importance of resisting the first step of 
encroachment upon the balanced powers of the Con- 
stitution. 

" Those fathers accomplished the Revolution on a strict 
question of principle. The Parliament of Great Britain asserted 
a right to tax the colonies in all cases whatsoever ; and it was 

23 353 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

precisely uii this question that they made the Revolution turn. 
The amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was 
inconsistent with liberty ; and that was in their eyes enough. 
It was against the recital of an act of Parliament rather than 
against any suffering under its enactments that they took up 
arms. They went to war against a preamble. They fought 
seven years against a declaration. They poured out their 
treasures and their blood like water, in a contest against an 
assertion which those less sagacious and not so well schooled 
in the principles of civil liberty would have regarded as barren 
phraseology, or mere parade of words. They saw in the claim 
of the British Parliament a seminal principle of mischief, 
the germ of unjust power; they detected it, dragged it forth 
from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it ; nor did 
it elude either their steady eye or their well-directed blow, till 
they had extirpated and destroyed it to the smallest fibre. On 
this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar 
off, they raised their flag against a power to which for purposes 
of foreign conquest and subjugation Rome, in the height of 
her glory, is not to be compared ; a power which has dotted 
over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and 
military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun 
and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with 
one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of 
England."^ (Works, Edition 1851, iv, p. 109.) 

The idea of the Protest was never heard of again 
after Jackson disappeared from politics ; but Webster 
and the Whigs were unable to have the deposits returned 
to the Bank of the United States. Webster introduced 
a bill to recharter the Bank; but as it would surely 
have been rejected in the Lower House if it passed the 
Senate, he did not press it to a vote. The deposits 
remained with the State banks, the Bank of the United 
States came to an end with the expiration of its charter 

* Referring to this speech Harvey reports Webster as say- 
ing : " I got that impression as I stood on the walls of Quebec 
for the first time, and casting an imaginary glance over the 
broad extent of that dominion, thought of the magnitude of the 
power that governed half a civilized world by her superior 
intellect. And I was proud," he added, " that the blood of 
the Englishman flowed in my veins." (Harvey, Reminiscences, 
p. 144.) 

354 



A CHANCE FOR THE PRESIDENCY 

in 1836, the panic wore itself out and was followed 
almost immediately by other panics, and the financial 
system remained in disorder until the Democrats finally 
worked out the sub-treasury plan in 1846. 

The next year, 1835, nominations for the Presi- 
dency were again in order. It had long been one of 
the pet desires of President Jackson to have his friend 
and supporter, the Vice-President, Mr. Martin Van 
Buren, succeed him, or at least be nominated by the 
Democrats. He had his way in this as in everything 
else in his party. The Democrats nominated Van 
Buren ; and it was included by Jackson among his vic- 
tories when he retired to his plantation in Tennessee 
and boasted that he had won all his battles, defeated 
all his enemies, and rewarded all his friends. 

As for the Whigs, they were in their usual state of 
confusion. They could not very well have a grand 
convention of the whole party, because they still had 
among them the faction of anti-]\Iasons who would 
destroy all harmony. Their nominations were made 
here and there by a State Legislature or a caucus of 
the Legislature where they felt themselves particularly 
strong. Clay having been defeated in the last election 
was out of the race for the present. In Ohio the 
Whigs nominated Mr. McLean, but he was not greeted 
anywhere with much enthusiasm. 

In Massachusetts the Whigs inclined to nominate 
Webster ; and he was constantly receiving letters from 
every part of the Union from people who were eager to 
vote for him and urged his candidacy in the strongest 
language. He had been in this delicate position for 
many years ; the forces that bring a nomination surging 
round him but never quite reaching the mark. He had 
a proper ambition for such a distinguished honor; his 
feelings were moved and aroused by the popularity and 
applause ; but it was very difficult for him to say or do 
anything directly. A man in such a position usually 
tries to say as little as possible. All he could do was 

355 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to correspond discreetly with particular friends and 
say that he had made up his mind " to be passive and 
satisfied with any result." 

The nomination by the Whigs of the Massachusetts 
Legislature was made in due time and Webster was par- 
tially before the country as a candidate for the Presi- 
dency. If the Whigs in some other States should nomi- 
nate him he would be in a strong position as a candidate. 
Pennsylvania was an important State, where the Whigs 
showed great enthusiasm for him, and they seemed 
likely to hold a nominating convention of the modern 
kind if not prevented by the anti-Mason faction. At a 
public meeting in Chester County, the Whigs and anti- 
Masons united and appointed delegates favorable to 
Webster, and at a similar meeting in Alleghany County 
the anti-Masons, though in the ascendant, elected Web- 
ster delegates. 

All would have been well probably if the fanatical 
anti-Masons, not content with Webster being entirely 
outside of and out of sympathy with the dreaded secret 
order, had not insisted on asking him questions. In the 
insanity of their delusion they feared he might not be 
willing to purge the government offices of every trace 
and suspicion of masonry. The spoils system intro- 
duced by Jackson had poisoned the whole country with 
the idea that the election of a President would accom- 
plish nothing unless he made a clean sweep of all offices 
from clerks and scrub women up to secretaries of state. 
The Whigs admired Webster's intellect and statesman- 
ship, his large grasp of the greatest problems and his 
ardent patriotism. They were ready to vote for him 
and even Democrats were inclined to vote for him ; but 
unfortunately a large section of his own party felt 
in their small deluded consciences that all his great 
talents were as nothing compared to the importance of 
his opinion on Masons in public office. They were not 
willing to rely on his efficiency, ability and patriotism, 
that had been tested a thousand times, but must needs 

356 



A CHANCE FOR THE PRESIDENCY 

demand that he promise, if elected, to confine himself 
i " to anti-Masons in nominations to office." 

It was the most trying, petty and contemptible posi- 
tion in which such a broad-gauge man could be placed. 
He tried to go as far as he could without disgust. He 
assured them that he had no sympathy whatever with 
Masonry or secret societies in general, that there could 
be " no question of the constitutional right of those 
who believed secret societies to be moral or political 
evils to seek to remove those evils by the exercise of the 
elective franchise.'' But he would go no farther. 

" What a Chief Magistrate must do, and ought to do, so 

I far as he is elected on Anti-Masonic principles, and in regard 

1 to portions of the country where those principles prevail, can 

be no matter of doubt to you or to me, or to any man who 

reflects, and who means to act with candor and honesty toward 

those who support him. I hope no one hesitates to believe 

that I am altogether incapable of disappointing in that 

respect any natural and just expectation which friends may 

form. But it does not consist with my sense of duty to hold 

out promises, particularly on the eve of a great election, the 

results of which are to affect the highest interests of the 

country for years to come." (Works, National Edition, vol. 

ji xvi, p. 260.) 

He had a high ideal of the Presidency. He desired 
I it as an honor, he had often said in his impressive 
' voice that it was the highest earthly honor that could 
be attained. He probably desired it too strongly and 
was too ambitious for it. But with his brilliant past 
and the high position of intellectual independence to 
which he had raised himself, he could not step down to 
bid for it in the way the anti-Masons desired : and they 
, should have had intelligence enough not to ask him. 
' Probably Old Jackson, in a similar position, would 

have answered " By the Eternal, Masonry shall be 
I torn out root and branch and exterminated from the 
face of the earth ; " and if he had added a few character- 
istic oaths the hats would have swung up with " Hurrah 
for Jackson " ; and nobody would have thought of saying 

357 



THE TRUE DAXIEL WEBSTER 

that he was inaking" a low bargain for tlic Presidency. 
Jackson was never held to account for any kind of trick- 
ery ; but Clay and Webster were always held to the 
highest responsibihty. 

In 1835, when he declined the anti-Mason temptation, 
the Whigs of Pennsylvania split in half, and were un- 
able to hold a united convention. The anti- Mason fac- 
tion held their convention first, and rejected Webster 
because he had been, they said, a Federalist, and they 
could not " carry him " ; or, in modern phrase, he was 
not available. So Webster was punished for the sins 
of his youth ; for having acted with the party which 
opposed the War of 181 2. If he had been nominated, 
no doubt, there would have been violent attacks upon 
him, after the manner of Hayne's famous speech, for 
his part in the war. In the popular view that was his 
vulnerable point. ^ 

Instead of the great orator, the anti-Masons nom- 
inated General William Henry Harrison, who seemed 
available and easy to " carry," because he was of the 
soldier hero class and his services in the War of 1812 
had been somewhat distinguished. The regular Whigs 
of Pennsylvania met in convention the next day, and 
in order not to divide the party still farther, accepted 
the nomination made by the anti-Masons. But the party 
was hopelessly split. The southern Whigs preferred 
and voted for Hugh L. White, of Tennessee. The 
Democrats in consequence had an easy victory, and 
Martin Van Buren became President. 

Webster was much provoked and mortified, and at 
times depressed, over the loss of this nomination. It 

^William Plumer, Webster's old friend in Congress, said 
of him, " He is considered as standing at the head of the old 
Federal party; and the sins of the party are visited on him. 
There is no great justice in this; but there are too many men, 
in all parties, who know how to use this circumstance to his 
prejudice." (Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvii, p. 
558; Curtis, vol. i, p. 511.) 

358 



J 



A CHANCE FOR THE PRESIDENCY 

was the time when he was the right age and the chances 
seemed good. He feh as if he were being deprived 
of what he deserved. 

"Webster is ambitious," said his old friend Plumer; "and 
can be satisfied with nothing short of the highest. He has 
acquired all the fame which mere speech-making can confer on 
him ; but he has no substantial power adequate to his desire or 
the acknowledged force of his mind. He has long served under 
men whom he does not like and whom he considers his in- 
feriors in mental power. His attempt to form a party of his 
own, or rather to put himself at the head of the opponents 
(Whigs and Democrats) of General Jackson, has been unsuc- 
cessful and he feels that Clay, though his inferior in many 
respects, is yet the acknowledged leader of the Whig party." 
(Webster, Works, vol. xvii, pp. 559, 560.) 

Both Webster and Henry Clay seem to have been 
overanxious for the Presidency. Clay seems to have been 
worse in this respect than Webster, and had his heart 
most inordinately set upon it. Neither of them shotild 
have bothered so much about it. Their fame was se- 
cure and possibly better secured without it. Certainly, 
in Webster's case, the author of the reply to Hayne and 
the reply to Calhoun wall a thousand years hence still 
be a living force when many of the Presidents will have 
become mere names on a long list. Even if Webster 
had been nominated and elected at this time, there was 
nothing remarkable he could have done ; and that elec- 
tion would have prevented him becoming Secretary of 
State and negotiating the Ashburton Treaty, a very 
remarkable and famous event for him. 



359 



XIV 

ATTEMPTS TO RETIRE PANIC OF 1 837 — SUB-TREASURt; 

— VISIT TO ENGLAND HARD CIDER CAMPAIGN 

— SECRETARY OF STATE 

For a time there are smoother waters in Webster's 
life. Most of the greatest events of his career, the 
speeches and orations which made his wonderful reputa- 
tion, are behind him. He is still at work in the Senate 
and in the Supreme Court. We read of his efforts in the 
dispute with France over the payment of claims for the 
American vessels and cargoes which were seized in the 
Napoleonic wars. The financial question came up again. 
The crude method forced upon the country by President 
Jackson, of depositing the government funds in selected 
State banks, was working badly. The banks not having 
been created for such a service were awkward and 
uncertain in handling the funds. The Mexican province 
of Texas was winning her independence and it was a 
question whether she should remain an independent, 
slave-holding nation or become an American slave-hold- 
ing State, and add to the power of the South. Senator 
Benton kept renewing his motion to expunge from the 
Senate journal the resolution which declared the re- 
moval by President Jackson of the deposits from the 
Bank of the United States unlawful and unconstitu- 
tional ; and he finally succeeded, and black lines were 
drawn round the obnoxious resolution and " expunged " 
was written across it just to please Jackson and make 
the old fellow happy as he was leaving the Presidency 
and retiring to his good brick house on the plantation 
in Tennessee. 

In all these things Webster had a part; and his 
words, as usual, were strong and interesting. Even 
on the absurd subject of the expunging resolution, when 

360 



ATTEMPTS TO RETIRE 

one begins to read his remarks, the attention is held 
and the speech read to the end for the perfection of the 
reasoning and language alone. But we must pass 
lightly over all this routine, as we may, perhaps, call it, 
valuable though it was in its day and place. A new 
subject had come before Congress, a terrible one, with 
which Webster in the end was compelled to deal and 
suffer vast unpopularity in New England. 

In his reply to Hayne he had asserted positively that 
the North had no intention of interfering with slavery 
in the South and had not interfered with it. It had not 
interfered officially; that was true. The public men 
of the North were as one in the opinion that slavery 
in the States where it was recognized and legaHzed 
bv the Constitution should be let alone. Unfavorable 
comment and criticism on slavery had been compara- 
tively slight. Slavery had, of course, often been spoken 
of as an evil ; but hardly more in the North than in the 
South. Emancipation societies were in fact more nu- 
merous in the South than in the North. But now the 
abolitionist party of New England and the West, though 
barely five years old, was gathering most alarming- 
strength; their ideas were spreading throughout the 
North and they announced in the boldest and most open 
manner that they intended " the speedy and entire 
abolition of slavery." Their petitions were flooding 
Congress; and so determined were the majorities in 
both Houses, and indeed the majority of people in the 
North at that time, that there should be no official inter- 
ference with slavery, that Congress would not even re- 
ceive the petitions. Webster resisted this decision; he 
thought that the petitions should be received and read. 
To reject them on sight was, he argued, a denial of an 
immemorial Anglo-Saxon right and tended rather to 
inflame the fanatical abolitionists and give them the 
popularity of martyrdom. 

That Webster felt that there would be no more great 
opportunities for him in the Senate and that he would 

361 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

have a better chance for the Presidency by resigning 
cannot be positively asserted. But at this particular 
time he broke out in a long-threatened determination 
to resign and retire to private life and farming on a 
large scale. He was almost fifty-five years old. He 
had had a long and most laborious political and legal 
career at Washington. He had argued in the Supreme 
Court momentous constitutional cases which, being de- 
cided his way, had built up nationality and union. In 
the same court he had appeared every winter in innumer- 
able suits involving the most important commercial 
interests and millions of dollars. At the same time he 
had more than fulfilled his duties in the Senate. The 
mere animal energy required to go through with this 
prodigious double work in both court and Senate was in 
itself a marvel and has seldom been equalled. He had 
expounded in the Senate great constitutional principles 
and raised them to a clearness and popularity they had 
never had before. There were millions of people in 
the country who were saying at every opportunity that 
he had done more for sound principles of finance and 
more to establish nationality and union than any man 
since the framers of the Constitution. 

Having gone through with such a task for so many 
years and lived what to him was a detestable life in 
lodgings at the capital, having for so long thrown away, 
as it seemed to him, great opportunities of professional 
advancement and increase of fortune, he felt that he 
had earned either retirement or a change of occupation. 
He never had had leisure to visit England or travel in 
Europe, although he had been planning for that enjoy- 
ment for twenty years. No doubt as he grew older the 
strain of the sedentary life told more and more unpleas- 
antly upon his health. The drinking habits of the Sen- 
ate were bad; the pocket pistol, as the whiskey flask 
was called, was always in evidence ; there were feasts 
in committee rooms, and Webster, like others, is gener- 
ally believed to have seriously injured his iron con.sti- 

362 



ATTEMPTS TO RETIRE 

tutioii. The irritability which characterized his later 
years may have begun at this time. No doubt he also 
felt that he was entitled to a suitable nomination for the 
Presidency, and had been rather unfairly denied it. 

The red gods again called loudly to him. He could 
think of nothing but Marshfield, the ocean, the great 
fields, the cattle, the crops, the loads of kelp, his friends 
the Thomases, who sympathized with his tastes, and the 
boatmen who took him fishing and gave him long days 
of health and glorious nights of sleep. From these his 
powerful energies branched out, leaving the dry law 
and the Constitution, and the " din of politics," as he 
called it, and set him dreaming about the vast prairies 
of the West. Everyone was listening to tales of their 
wonderful fertility and the romance and freedom of the 
life. He himself had grown eloquent about them in the 
Senate. So he was planning a great farm in Illinois, a 
thousand acres at least, partly as a land speculation, 
partly as a pleasure, and wondering whether he would 
love it as much as he loved Marshfield. 

He had for some time been buying western land and 
interests. He had had his son Fletcher out there buy- 
ing for him in several States and had also been buying 
through agreements with persons in that region. In 
company wath members of Congress he bought an in- 
terest in Winnebago City. This he admitted was 
" fancy stock." From a letter only recently printed we 
learn that in March, 1838, he owned lands in Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin which he 
wished to sell and had sent Ray Thomas out there at a 
salary of $2000 a year and expenses to sell them for 
him and look after his interests. His large farm near 
La Salle, Illinois, he intended to keep, and his son 
Fletcher was already living on it. He had, no doubt, 
been led into these purchases and expenses by the 
excitement and wild talk about such things in Wash- 
ington. They seem to have been pretty much all fail- 
ures; and they enable us to see how all the money he 

363 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

could make was dissipated and why his debts 
accumulated.^ 

We have a letter he wrote about this time to the son 
of Captain Thomas, Charles H. Thomas, who, now that 
the captain had grown old, seems to have been the 
manager at Marshfield. Webster's letters v/ere usually 
short, even those on very important political subjects, 
but this letter about things to be done at Marshfield 
was a very long one, possibly the longest he ever wrote, 
full of directions and inquiries about liming, hauling 
kelp from the seashore, fattening the old oxen, giving 
pleasing names to the outlying farms he had bought in, 
and all manner of anticipation of the pleasures he 
would have as soon as he could break away from the 
Senate and the Supreme Court and break loose at 
Marshfield. The keen, shrewd brevity of his letters 
on politics and business display his intellect, but this 
Marshfield letter, with its exuberance of details, its in- ,. 
difference as to time or number of words, shows where • 
his heart was. 

Shortly before this letter was written his desire to 
retire from public life could no longer be restrained, 
and he sent to the Massachusetts Legislature his resig- 
nation from the Senate. His great farm near La Salle, |! 
Illinois, was to be stocked and developed in the most 
approved way for great profit and great pleasure and 
called Salisbury, after his native town in New Hamp- 
shire. He, himself, must go out there, travel about 
to see more of his own country, and then gratify the 
desire of his whole life by a visit to England. He 
might, at some future time, perhaps, return to the 
Senate ; but for awhile, he thought, he ought to devote 
himself to his private interests which had been sacrificed 
for so many years. 

He found, however, that his friends, followers and 
admirers were determined to put him in a position in 



^ Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 279, 280, 295, 296. 

364 



ATTEMPTS TO RETIRE 

,vhich resignation would be practically impossible. A 
:ommittee of the Whigs of the Massachusetts Legisla- 
lure, with the Speaker, Robert C. Winthrop, at their 
lead, requested him to withdraw his resignation, or, at 
east, postpone it for a year. Private letters to the 
;ame effect poured in upon him. In New York a meet- 
ng of Whigs, at which Chancellor Kent presided, 
\rranged for a very magnificent public dinner which 
A-as intended either to stop his resignation or celebrate 
lis retirement in a most imposing form. The truth 
ivas, that in the confused state of the public finances 
IS the result of Jacl<son's reign, and the uncertainty 
3f the stability of the Union under the nullification and 
anti-slavery excitements, nearly all the mercantile, bank- 
ing and manufacturing classes, as well as lovers of the 
L'nion, relied upon Webster's assistance as indispen- 
sable and sincerely regarded his resignation as a 
calamity. 

Never before or since, in the history of the country, 
nas such popular pressure been brought to bear upon 
1 Senator to prevent his retirement. They seemed to 
:are little about his aspirations for the Presidenc)^ but 
everything for having him do their work in the field 
where he had proved his fitness, the Senate. He found 
himself utterly unable to resist. The resignation was 
withdrawn, and at the New York meeting he made a 
speech usually known as the speech at Niblo's Garden 
Dr Niblo's Saloon ; and a good deal praised. A modern 
reading of it, however, seems to rank it among his minor 
efforts. He gave a good review of the Jacksonian ad- 
ministrations and his own conduct and opinions. He 
went back into the past, and forecasted the future, warn- 
ing against the annexation of Texas, foretelling the 
:oming power of the Abolitionists and the increasing 
danger to the Union of the slavery question. 
I In May he made a tour to Ohio, Kentucky and 
Illinois ; and the account of it is a most extraordinary 
'ecord of public dinners, barbecues, speeches to immense 

36s 



THE TRUE DAxMEL WEBSTER 

crowds and people flocking to see him, as one of the 
curiosities and wonders of the world. He met them in 
an intimate social way and they were charmed by his 
genial manner and hearty enjoyment of the simple 
pleasures of western life. Evidently he was a revela- 
tion to them of personal dignity, intellectual power, 
manly bearing and social ease which enlarged their faith 
and wonder in the capacity of human nature. There 
are several instances in his life of this popularity, an 
amazing popularity among all sorts and conditions of 
men, greater than anything we have seen in our time. 
And yet in many ways it was not equal to the popularity 
of Jackson. Webster could not be elected to the Presi- 
dency and had not even hold enough to secure a favor- 
able and whole-souled nomination from any party. 

Possibly his popularity may have been made up 
from a class different from that of Jackson, or made up i 
largely of mere curiosity and wonder at the unusual 
spectacle of such talents, genius, intellect and personal I 
appearance united in one man ; or, perhaps, he needed 
just that one slight touch of military experience which 
always inflames the American heart. If he had been 
in just one small battle, exhibited some one act of 
violence, ordered a couple of Spaniards or Englishmen 
shot, he might have been nominated by acclamation of 
all parties. 

While he was away on this western tour, the famous 
financial panic of 1837 began. It was the most serious 
and devastating of all the rapidly succeeding panics 
which had resulted from Jackson's passionate manipula- 
tion of the Treasury and the banks. It was precipitated 
by the Jackson Specie Circular, as it was called, which 
w^as an order from the Treasury, without any authority 
from Congress or from laws, directing the government 
agents to accept only gold and silver in payment for 
sales of public lands. It was part of the Jackson party's | 
plan to bring about a currency composed of only gold 
and silver and abolish bank notes and paper money 

366 



PANIC OF 1837 

altogether. This effort on their part, Webster charged, 
arose from the fear that their unfortunate meddhnEr 
with the deposits and the banks would soon precipitate 
an inordinate and disastrous issue of irredeemable paper 
money which might, perhaps, be prevented if they 
rushed everything at once to specie and made the whole 
currency specie. The effect of the Specie Circular was 
to render worthless the notes of the wild-cat banks of the 
West, and by confining the government to specie, to 
diminish the general circulation of the money of the 
country. The diminished circulation checked business, 
lowered prices, overwhelmed debtors, discouraged enter- 
prise, and soon it was found that no bank, wild or tame, 
could pay its debts or borrow money. 

It was the final experiment, the last spasm of the 
thoroughly rotten and absurd Jacksonian financial sys- 
tem, and may have been valuable for the purpose of 
clearing the whole thing away and giving an oppor- 
tunity for sounder methods. Men's eyes were begin- 
ning to open and see that it had all been wrong, not only 
Jackson's schemes, the removal of the deposits, the 
establishment of pet banks for the government funds, 
but the United States Bank itself, although it had 
been valuable and worked well for forty years. 

President Van Buren, who succeeded Jackson, dealt 
with the situation both wisely and well. He called a 
special session of Congress, which compelled Webster to 
cut short his western tour before the crowds that came 
to stare at him were half satisfied. In compliance with 
the President's wishes Congress authorized the Treasury 
to issue its own notes to the amount of $10,000,000, a 
plan resembling in principle the method adopted during 
the Civil War. Webster opposed this issue, because 
the notes, being without interest and with no fixed period 
for redemption, were mere paper money. We can sym- 
pathize with his thoroughgoing, hard money principles ; 
but in this instance he was going too far. This paper 
money issue was valuable as a temporary expedient ; 

367 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

because the government, though lately so rich that it had 
divided part of its surplus among the States, had now 
not sufficient money to pay its creditors. Its revenues 
were in the Jackson State banks, and those banks could 
pay nothing. 

For a permanent plan for managing the public 
finances the Whigs were stupid enough to propose the 
chartering of another United States Bank. But Presi- 
dent Van Buren, in his message to Congress, was 
forced by the circumstances to take a very fortunate 
view of the situation. He felt that he must wipe out 
the whole Jacksonian muddle, and therefore he suggested 
that the government cut loose altogether from banks of 
every kind, that it make no attempt to regulate the 
currency in any of the old methods, and that its revenues 
should be held in the hands of its collecting officers 
under bond, in various parts of the country, to be paid 
out by them to public creditors on Treasury orders. 
This, with subsequent modifications, became the sub- 
treasury plan under which we have prospered so well 
for several generations ; so well, indeed, that we are 
unconscious of it ; and most of us are unaware that 
there is a sub-treasury. 

But when proposed in the Congress of 1837, it 
could not be carried. Webster opposed it in a powerful 
speech, going over again in a most interesting manner 
all the facts and reasons which showed how valuable 
the United States Bank had been in the past. As 
presented at that time the sub-treasury plan was coupled 
with the assertion of the Democratic principle that the 
government had no power to regulate the currency. 
It was this doctrine that Webster particularly attacked, 
and he showed in his luminous and instructive way 
that the power given by the Constitution to regulate 
coinage and regulate commerce, coupled with the pro- 
hibition against the States issuing their own paper for 
circulation, necessarily gave the power to create a stable 
currency and regulate it. 

368 



SUB-TREASURY 

The sub-treasury plan was not adopted until 1840. 
[t was repealed by the Whigs in 1841, and finally estab- 
ished by the Democrats in 1846. Webster would, no 
Joubt, now admit its usefulness ; but in his time it 
ieems to have impressed him as a crude absurdity, a 
,vithdrawal of the government funds from useful circu- 
ation and a locking of them up in vaults and cellars 
:/ery much as old country people are supposed to keep 
:heir savings hid away behind the chimney or under the 
)arn. It was too simple ; he had been too long accus- 
;omed to complications and elaborateness to grasp such 
m astoundingly easy solution. 

His numerous and often lengthy arguments against 
;he sub-treasury are, however, extremely valuable and 
nstructive reading, both historically as well as for their 
iinlightening exposition of many of the eternal verities 
Df finance. It must be remembered that the sub-treasury 
olan was not presented to him in the simple form it 
jissumes when we now watch its workings. It was 
presented mixed up with and supported by wild absurdi- 
;ies, or principles, so-called, of the Jackson party. That 
Darty was railing against banks and credit, storming 
igainst imaginary aristocracies, exciting the poor to 
nake war upon the rich, telling the laborer, whose 
vvages were higher than anywhere else in the world, 
:hat he was a shackled slave, and assailing the long- 
established methods of finance as oppressions. They 
were supporting the sub-treasury as a plan '* to rid the 
lountry of all banks as being but so many nuisances 
lind to abolish all paper currency whatever." They 
nanaged to connect this advocacy of the sub-treasury 
A'ith their defence of the Specie Circular. Having 
iound that the circular had diminished circulation and 
i:hus brought on the panic, they attempted to show that 
here was too much money circulating at that time, and 
herefore the circular must have been a good thing, in 
ipite of the panic. A large part of one of Webster's 
speeches against the sub-treasury was taken up in 
24 369 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

proving that there was not, at that time, an excess of 
currency ; and his method of showing this was of edu- 
cational vahie to everybody. 

In fact, in the whole series of these financial speeches 
against the Jacksonian fanaticism, extending over a num- '' 
ber of years, Webster occupied a very high educational 
position, which endeared him to the hearts and minds of 
the conservative and well-educated elements of the coun- 
try, the bankers, the capitalists, the merchants and the 
trading and shipping interest ; wicked, dangerous people 
all of them, said the Democrats. These capitalist classes 11 
felt so grateful to Webster that they willingly supplied | 
large sums of money to pay his debts and keep him in { 
Congress. They became his people, his constituency ^; 
scattered over the whole country, his clients, some have '• 
insisted on calling them, aiid he became their represen- 
tative, " the merchant's pet " who roused both their 
admiration and their confidence whenever he explained 
the functions of banks, money and finance. 

He must have given exhaustive study to these sub- ^ 
jects ; for his exposition of them is as valuable to-day as ' 
it was eighty years ago, and is delightful reading be- 
sides. One of his criticisms of the sub-treasury plan is '{ 
still a sound one. He deplored its tendency to hoard the 
government money, lock it up in vaults, instead of put- 
ting it in free circulation among the people, as the 
United States Bank had done. This inconvenience in 
times of money stringency has been often felt ; but, of 
course, does not outweigh the great general advantage | 
of the sub-treasury. | 

The exact origin of the sub-treasury plan seems to 
be unknown, except that we find it first suggested in 
Congress in 1834 by W. F. Gordon, of Virginia.- Van 
Buren made no claims as its originator. It was, how- | 
ever, an obvious method ; for if, as an individual or ;i 



*Von Holt, Constitutional History of the U. S., vol. ii, j 
p. 202. 

370 



SUB-TREASURY 

roverniiient, you cannot trust banks to keep your money, 
he natural remedy is to build vaults or hiding places of 
•our own for it. The Democrats, having destroyed the 
Jnited States Bank and then having tried the experi- 
nent of pet State banks and the experiment of abolish- 
ng bank notes, all with ruinous results, were simply 
Iriven to the sub-treasury plan as a last, and, as it 
urned out, very lucky resort. 

One of the discussions of the sub-treasury came near 
)ranching out into a debate on nullification, disunion 
.nd all sorts of subjects like the Great Debate of 1830. 
Calhoun was advocating the sub-treasury, but not alto- 
l^ether on the merits we now see in it. The sworn 
:nemy of Jackson, he had now, however, gone over to 
he support of Jackson's pupil, Van Buren. He had 
•hanged all the opinions of his youth and middle age ; 
rom having been an advocate of protection, union, 
nternal improvements and of the United States Bank, 
16 was now the enemy of all of them, and was rail- 
ng against the long-established methods of finance, 
lenouncing everything settled and conservative, and 
eemed to think that the sub-treasury would, in some 
vay, help nullification and slaver}^ That he aroused 
ivVebster's high indignation was natural, and the two 
)ld friends were soon pitted against each other in a 
:ontroversy which has given us some of the most fre- 
[uently quoted passages of Websterian eloquence. It 
vas in this debate that, speaking again for union and 
igainst Calhoun's boast that he was marching under 
he " Banner of State Rights," Webster said : 

" I came into public life, sir, in the service of the United 
states. On that broad ahar my earliest and all my public 
ows have been made. I propose to serve no other master. So 
ar as depends on any agency of mine, they shall continue 
Jnited States: united in interest and in affection; united in 
verything in regard to which the Constitution has decreed 
heir union; united in war for the common defence, the com- 
aon renown and the common glory; and united, compacted, 
nit firmly together in peace, for the common prosperity and 

371 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

happiness of ourselves and our children." (Works, 1851 
Edition, vol. iv, p. 499.) 

Some of the best instances of that oratorical humor, 
so classic and perfect of its kind, are to be found in this 
debate. The picture he drew of old Jackson, frowning 
and terrible, suddenly walking into the Senate and find- 
ing that the Democrats had accepted as their leader 
and defender of his policies his detested enemy, Cal- 
houn, was a great hit in its day. i 

" On the broad surface of the country, sir, there is a spotl 
called the ' Hermitage.' In that residence is an occupantlj 
very well known and not a little remarkable in person andl 
character. Suppose, sir, the occupant of the Hermitage werej 
now to open that door, enter the Senate, walk forward, and 
look over the chamber to the seats on the other side. Be not 
frightened, gentlemen ; it is but fancy's sketch. Suppose he 
should thus come in among us, sir, and see into whose hands 
has fallen the chief support of that administration which was, 
in so great a degree, appointed by himself, and which he fondly 
relied on to maintain the principles of his own. If gentlemen 
were now to see his steady military step, his erect posture, his 
compressed lips, his firmly knitted brow, and his eyes full of 
fire, I cannot help thinking, sir, they would all feel somewhat 
queer. There would be, I imagine, not a little awkward moving 
and shuffling in their seats. They would expect soon to hear 
the roar of the lion, even if they did not feel his paw." 

Calhoun assailed Webster's opinions, conduct and 
consistency, comparing them with the immaculateness 
of his own ; and the opening passage of Webster's reply 
is another famous instance of that mellow humor. 

" Mr. President, — I came rather late to the Senate this 
morning, and happening to meet a friend on the avenue, I was 
admonished to hasten my steps, as ' the war was to be carried 
into Africa,' and I was expected to be annihilated. I lost no 
time in following the advice, sir, since it would be awkward 
for one to be annihilated without knowing anj^thing about it. 

" Well, sir, the war has been carried into Africa. The 
honorable member has made an expedition into regions as 
remote from the subject of the debate as the orb of Jupiter 
from that of the earth. He has spoken of the tariff, of slavery, 
and of the late war. Of all this I do not complain. On the 

372 



fl 



SUB-TREASURY 

;ontrary, if it be his pleasure to allude to all or any of these 
opics, for any purpose whatever, I am ready at all times to 
lear him. 

" Sir, this carrying the war into Africa, which has become 
common a phrase among us, is, indeed, imitating a great 
'■xample; but it is an example which is not always followed 
vith success. In the first place, every man, though he be a 
nan of talent or genius, is not a Scipio ; and in the next place, 
Is I recollect this part of Roman and Carthaginian history, — 
he gentleman may be more accurate, but as I recollect it, 
vhen Scipio resolved upon carrying the war into Africa, Han- 
■libal was not at home. Now, sir, I am very little like Han- 
libal, but I am at home, and when Scipio Africanus South- 
Taroliniensis brings the war into my territories, I shall not 
eave their defence to Asdrubal, nor Syphax, nor anybody else, 
meet him on the shore, at his landing, and propose but one 
:ontest." 

Calhoun resorted to the device of intimating that he 
lad something seriously unfavorable to say of Web- 
ster's conduct in the War of 1812, as compared with his 
,3wn, but time would not allow him to go into it. This 
way of leaving an unfavorable impression against a man 
Svithout incurring the responsibility of making definite 
charges was a small trick for the Carolina cavalier to 
Dlay. But Calhoun was a sadly changed man ; in chang- 
ng his politics to support nullification and slavery, his 
Tiethods also had suffered a change. The trick was a 
useless and even dangerous one to use against Web- 
ster. It gave him the broadest kind of opportunity to 
ase his powers of sarcasm. He called upon Calhoun for 
definite charges ; and as there was no response he went 
into the whole history of his own and Calhoun's conduct 
during the war, the days of their early friendship, when 
they had voted the same way on every public question, 
internal improvements, Bank, war measures and all, and 
Calhoun had been a union man endeavoring, as he said, 
ito "bind the republic together with a perfect system 
of roads and canals." It was a tactical blunder for 
Calhoun to raise the question; for it gave Webster a 
reason for showing by record proof Calhoun's complete 

373 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

summerset in opinion, and the tlimsiness of his excuses 
to cover it up and give the appearance of no change. 

It was a beautiful speech on Webster's part ; in fact, 
there was more than one in this debate with Calhoun; 
all of them full of tenderness for his old friend ; genial, 
and almost jovial, references to the old days of inti- 
macy ; high compliments to his ability and former useful- 
ness, " the generous character, the liberal and compre- 
hensive mind " of the youthful Carolinian, when he 
first appeared in Congress, overflowing with great ob- 
jects and high ideals. For perfection in English and 
beautiful simplicity and effectiveness, these speeches^ 
would find few equals even among Webster's best 
Francis Lieber, who listened to some of them, saic 
that such an opportunity for sarcasm had never beforf 
been offered to such a master of it.'' 

Webster, as already observed, had always had a 
fancy for being sent as Minister to England. Althougl: 
his services in political life were long and so undoubt- 
edly valuable to both his party and the country that hi.' 
wishes in any matter of this sort were entitled tc 
much consideration, yet he never was able to attain the 
only two offices for which he had any ambition, the 
Presidency and the mission to England. 

In the spring of 1838 there seemed as if there mighl 
be an opportunity for him to go to England. The 
boundary between Maine and Canada had long been a 
subject of dispute, and it was now becoming a serious 
and unpleasant one. Inferior men, unable to grasp the 
situation, had prevented a settlement by increasing the 
irritation. It was now suggested that a special ministet 
be sent to England for the sole purpose of negotiating 
a settlement of the boundary ; and at least one member 
of President Van Buren's cabinet was in favor of send- 
ing Webster. The President himself rather doubted 
if the Massachusetts orator would be sufficiently pacific 



*Life and Letters, p. 129. 

374 



VISIT TO ENGLAND 

in his methods. But Webster, who felt that he under- 
stood the question, was quite ready to go, and gave 
to Mr. Poinsett, the member favorable to him in the 
cabinet, a memorandum of his views. 

However, the President made no appointment, which 
was probably just as well. Webster would very likely 
have gotten himself in difficulties by going in the service 
of an administration with which he was not politically 
connected, and as things turned out, he went about the 
business in a much better way by going as a private 
individual to accomplish one great object of his life, 
a sight-seeing visit to England. 

He sailed in May of that year, 1839, apparently on 
one of the steamers which had only recently begun to 
carry passengers across the Atlantic ; for he describes 
the voyage as made from New York to Liverpool in a 
little over fourteen days through a calm sea. It was 
so calm, he says, that his favorite fisherman, Peterson, at 
Marshfield, " could have rowed me over in my boat." 
There were some eighty passengers on board, rather 
crowded, he said, and he amused himself learning from 
the first mate to take latitude and longitude. He was 
always very fond of astronomy.* 

From one or two remarks in his letters he seems to 
have tliought that he could " do something useful to 
himself in England ; " and in another letter he writes, 
" I have such letters from England as induce me to 
think it would be greatly for my interest to make the 
trip." Exactly what he referred to is not clear. He 
may have meant that he could make such acquaintances 
there and show himself acceptable to that nation in such 
a way as would lead to his employment in negotiating 
a settlement of the boundary dispute. He felt that he 
could settle that dispute and win great distinction in it. 
But he also may have meant that he would be able to 
sell to capitalists in England his large holdings, some 

* Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 47. 

375 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

20,000 acres, of western lands. He was deeply in 
debt; these western speculations could not be readily 
turned into cash in America ; and he says in a letter 
that if he goes to England he must make the sale of 
these lands the leading object of his voyage.^ 

His family were with him — his wife, his daughter 
Julia, engaged to be married to Mr. Samuel Appleton, 
Mrs. Paige and his son Edward. It was a grand outing. 
They landed in Liverpool, visited quaint old Chester, as 
our tourists still do, and then went down to London, 
wondering at the agricultural beauty and richness, and 
the tasteful garden-like appearance of the country. 

" Even the wheat sowing and potato planting are all done 
so nicely, the ground looks as if it had been stamped as people 
stamp butter. And then there are the deep green fields, and 
the beautiful hedges. Of cattle, in driving over so great a 
part of this little Kingdom, I saw many varieties and of dif- 
ferent qualities. All around Liverpool the Ayrshire breeds 
abound, and they far surpass anything else I have seen. In 
hundreds of flocks every one looks as if William Sherburne 
had been feeding and carding it for six months." (Works, 
National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 308.) 

But they could not remain long unknown. Soon they 
were established in London in the midst of the season, 
and flooded with invitations to meet notables, poets, 
statesmen, and among them Boz, as Charles Dickens 
was called in those days. He looked, Webster said, " as 
if he were twenty-five or twenty-six years old, is some- 
what older, rather small, light complexion, and a good 
deal of hair, shows none of his peculiar humor in con- 
versation and is rather shy and retiring." 

Webster investigated the methods of Parliament and 
watched the barristers at the inns of court arguing cases. 
Of the barristers he said : 

" They are vastly better trained than we are. They speak 
slowly. They get up, begin immediately, and leave off when 

^ Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 306, 307 ; Van 
Tyne, Letters of Webster, p. 724. 

376 



VISIT TO ENGLAND 

they have done. Their manner is more like that of a school 
boy, who gets up to say his lesson, goes right through it and 
then sits down, than it is like our more leisurely and elaborate 
habit. I think Sergeant Wilde, who is esteemed a long 
speaker, argued an insurance question in fifteen minutes, that 
most of us would have got an hour's speech out of." (Works, 
National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 309.) 

Sir Robert Peel seems to have made a great impres- 
sion on him; and in after years he used to say, "Sir 
Robert Peel is head and shoulders above any man I 
ever saw in my life."*^ One of his best letters sent 
home was to young Charles Thomas, who v/as managing 
Marshfield ; and to whom he describes his meeting Syd- 
ney Smith, Wordsworth, Rogers and Moore, and the 
fashionable breakfasts of the day. 

" An English breakfast is the plainest and most informal 
thing in the world. Indeed in England the rule of politeness 
is to be quiet, act naturally, take no airs and make no bustle. 
. . . This perfect politeness has, of course, cost a good deal 
of drill. Fuss and feathers can be subdued only by strict 
discipline." (Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 308.) 

Of the debates in Parliament he said: 

" I have attended the debates a good deal, especially on 
important occasions. Some of their ablest men are far from 
being fluent speakers. In fact, they hold in no high repute the 
mere faculty of ready speaking, at least not so high as it is 
held in other places. They are universally men of business; 
they have not six and twenty other legislative bodies to take 
part of the law making of the country off their hands ; and 
where there is so much to be done, it is indispensable that less 
should be said. Their debates, therefore, are often little more 
than conversations across the table, and they usually abide by 
the good rule of carrying the measure under consideration one 
step, whenever it is taken up, without adjourning the debate. 
This rule, of course, gives way on questions of great interest." 
(Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 313.) 

It was the same experience that we have read of in 
. t the lives of Lowell, Holmes and other distinguished 
"I Americans who have visited England. Breakfasts and 



'Lyman's Memorials, vol. ii, p. 104. 

Z11 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

receptions without end and dinners for evermore. 
" London hospitalities," he writes, '' have nearly over- 
whelmed us," and after London came the invitations to 
the country seats of the aristocracy. His old friends 
who had known him when they travelled in America, of 
course, entertained him. He went to Oxford to the 
national cattle show and made a speech, the only one he 
delivered in England. Wherever he went he was inves- 
tigating the cattle and the turnip fields. The recent 
introduction of steamboats, which, it seems, had poured 
crowds of tourists into Scotland, spoiled part of his 
pleasure. He had hoped to roam among the scenes of 
Scott's romances unannoyed by bustle and hurry. He 
longed to walk with just one companion over the moun- 
tains " and moralize by the way." He wanted to " go 
far to the north and see the main frame of the highland 
world." 

Carlyle met him in London and wrote a characteristic 
description in a letter to Emerson. 

" Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notablest of 
all your notables, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent 
specimen. You might say to all the world, ' This is our Yankee 
Englishman ; such limbs we make in Yankee-land ! ' As a 
logic-fencer, advocate, or parliamentary Hercules, one would 
incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. 
The tanned complexion ; that amorphous, crag-like face : the dull 
black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite 
furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff mouth, accu- 
rately closed ; I have not traced so much of silent Berserker 
rage, that I remember of, in any other man. ' I guess I should 
not like to be your nigger ! ' Webster is not loquacious, but 
he is pertinent, conclusive ; a dignified, perfectly bred man, 
though not English in breeding; a man worthy of the best 
reception among us, and meeting such, I understand." 

Mr. John Kenyon, an Englishman, who saw a good 
deal of the Websters and travelled with them at times, 
has left some very interesting reminiscences far too long 
to quote in full. He was with them at Oxford ; but dis- 
liking the crowd at the agricultural dinner, dined with 

378 



VISIT TO ENGLAND 

Webster's family at their hotel while Webster himself 
was delivering his speech at the meeting. 

" He returned to us early in the evening, sliding into the 
room joyously, half as if he were dancing, and as if to tell us, 
good naturedly, that he was glad to come back to us. After 
a little while I said, ' But I am sorry to have missed your 
speech, which they say was a capital one.' ' Order in some wine 
and water and I will speak it to you over again ' ; which he 
did most festively, stopping by the way to tell me that he had 
wished and had prearranged with himself to make such and 
such points. Fancy how delightful and how attaching I found 
all this genial bearing, from so famous a man ; so affectionate, 
so little of a humbug. His greatness sat so easy and calm on 
him ; he never had occasion to whip himself into a froth." 

His address at Oxford was not as notable as he could 
have made it. From something he says it appears that 
he foimd the audience and circumstances not favorable 
to a long speech. So his brief remarks were for the 
most part complimentary and rather an introduction to 
what might have been a speech. For a moment he got 
on the subject of the oneness of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
hands across the sea, brothers, and all that sort of thing, 
which has so often been enlarged upon in our time. It 
was less hackneyed then, and in view of the way in which 
he wished to settle the rather serious matters of dispute 
betw^een us and England, he might naturally have 
wished to say more on this point. But very likely he 
said enough. 

One thing he said about English agriculture shows 
us how times have changed. Agricultural land, espe- 
cially wheat cultivation, has so increased in area all 
over the world that it is a long time since anyone has 
thought of the crops raised in little England as much 
more than a drop in the bucket. But Webster reminded 
his hearers that the fear of a short crop in England 
" deranges and agitates the business transactions and 
commercial speculations of the whole trading w^orld." 

When he returned home the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature, largely composed of farmers, insisted on his de- 

379 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

livering before them an address on English agriculture. 
This was far more interesting than his Oxford speech, 
and shows not only his enjoyment of farming and his 
close observation, but is of some historical value on the 
English methods of that day. Those were the days of 
very profitable agriculture, when the turnip was King 
of England as cotton was supposed to be King of 
America. It had been discovered, not so very long 
before, that turnips were the best rotation after wheat 
and barley ; and, as Webster said, " they vastly enriched 
England." They rested and with their broad leaves 
shaded from the defertilizing effects of sun and wind 
the ground that formerly had been wastefully allowed to 
lie bare with all the risks of that condition. At the 
same time they fed millions of sheep, which ate them 
all winter long on the ground. 

Webster describes some turnip fields of four hun- 
dred acres. Most of them, however, were of the more 
usual size of thirty or fifty acres. It astonished him 
that the sheep could live out all winter without shelter, 
and the large profit was obvious. The wonderful breeds 
of fine cattle and sheep, of course, delighted him. In- 
deed, it was the turnip that had developed these fine 
breeds, especially of the sheep. The turnip was every- 
thing. The literature of the country life of that time 
is full of it. The English partridge found shelter under 
the broad leaves, was also developed in great numbers, 
and afforded the finest sport with pointer and setter 
dogs that the English country gentlemen had ever 
known. The dogs themselves were developed to that 
perfection of intelligence and training we have known 
in our time. The country gentleman himself was de- 
veloped by the profits and the sport to a nobler character 
than before ; and surely if the turnip was not King of 
England, it deserved to be adopted as the national 
emblem of that age.'^ 

' Besides his speech see a letter, Works, National Edition, 
vol. xvi, p. 314. 

380 



VISIT TO ENGLAND 

Webster had also much to say on underground drain- 
age and sowing with a drill, which were then rather new 
ideas, and he also described the irrigation at Sherwood 
Forest. 

Although nothing was ever positively said about it, 
yet it is probable that Webster took particular pains 
to make himself agreeable in England, with the design 
that confidence and good will of that sort would be a 
great help to him if he should be called upon to settle 
the diplomatic difficulties between the two countries. 
In this part of his plan he certainly succeeded. 

" Mr. Webster's calm manner of speaking," says Miss 
Mitford, " excited much admiration, and perhaps a little sur- 
prise, as contrasted with the astounding and somewhat rough 
rapidity of progress which is the chief characteristic of his 
native land. And yet that calmness of manner was just what 
might be expected from a countryman of Washington ; earnest, 
thoughtful, weighty, wise. No visitor to London ever left 
behind him pleasanter recollections, and I hope that the good 
impression was reciprocal. Everybody was delighted with 
his geniality and taste; and he could hardly fail to like the 
people who so heartily liked him." (Mary Russell Mitford, 
Recollections of a Literary Life.) 

Mr. Kenyon took him and his family to see Miss 
Mitford. They walked in her pretty garden ; and he 
afterwards sent her some seeds of American plants, 
which she considered a very distinguished and kind 
attention. He left England, Mr. Denison tells us. as if 
he had again determined to quit both public and profes- 
sional life and devote himself more to his great western 
farm in Illinois. He no doubt talked much of the 
waving prairies : but when he arrived in New York on 
the 29th of December, 1839. he found that a few weeks 
before the \^'higs had at last succeeded in holding a 
national convention, had again nominated General Har- 
rison for the Presidency and there was heavy work to 
be done. 

He took his accustomed place in the Senate in 
February, 1840, having been re-elected the previous 

381 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

year. But the only striking event in his hfe this winter 
and spring was not poHtical. Young Ray Thomas, 
whom he employed as agent for his western lands and 
to whom he had taken a great fancy and treated like one 
of his family, came to Washington to see him, was 
taken ill of one of those violent bilious fevers so much 
heard of in those times, and died. His illness was pecu- 
liarly distressing, accompanied by convulsions and 
delirium ; but the distinguished Senator from Massa- 
chusetts was frequently at his bedside and " for about 
a week,'' the doctor reported. " was with him almost 
constantly day and night." His careful and detailed 
letters to the young man's parents every day, and some- 
times twice a day, are really beautiful, a revelation 
of a wonderful character and tenderness, but unfor- 
tunately too many to quote in this volume. He sent 
the body home to be buried in his own graveyard at 
Marshfield. 

Soon afterwards the Presidential campaign to elect 
Harrison began and Webster's services were demanded. 
The Jacksonian craze had passed ; and the eyes of the 
people were opening. As a result of Democratic rule 
through two administrations of " Old Hickory " and one 
of his pupil. Van Buren, the people saw nothing but a 
continuous and universal derangement of the currency 
and a continuous series of financial panics and bank- 
ruptcies. They were amazed, lost faith in their heroes, 
were ready for a peaceful revolution, and very anxious 
to hear arguments and ideas. Immense crowds attended 
the meetings, speech-makings, conventions and pro- 
cessions which were gotten up on every occasion and 
excuse all over the countr}^ 

The Whig candidate. General Harrison, was not a 
man of very marked ability ; but he had certain charac- 
teristics, in a small way, resembling the most popular 
of Jackson's, which made him the best person that 
could have been nominated. He had fought in the 
War of 1812, he had been poor in his youth, had lived 

382 



HARD CIDER CAMPAIGN 

in a log- cabin, and had a reputation for honesty. The 
log- cabin proved to be an unforeseen but most lucky 
accident. It took the place of " By the Eternal " and 
other forms of Jacksonian fury. The Democrats un- 
wittingly started it. Some of their newspapers began 
ridiculing the origin of Harrison, saying that he had 
been born in a log cabin, that his mother had cradled 
him in a sap trough, rocked him to sleep in a hog trough, 
dressed him in coonskins, and brought him up on hard 
cider. It was a most fatal mistake. The Whigs saw 
their chance and adopted it all. Webster himself recom- 
mended it. " Let him," he said, " be the log cabin 
candidate." 

So pictures and speeches represented Harrison as 
the log-cabin hard-cider coonskin candidate. The 
Whigs called themselves coons and called the Demo- 
crats Locofocos, because when the lights went out at 
a Democratic meeting in Tammany Hall they lit locofoco 
matches. Great capital was made of Harrison's victory 
over the Indians at Tippecanoe, and there was a song of 
" Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Log cabins were carried 
in processions. The people assembled in log cabins or 
at " hard-cider log-cabin coonskin bear-trap Tippe- 
canoe-and-Tyler-too mass meetings," to make speeches, 
drink the old frontier cider, and sing songs about Tippe- 
canoe. It was in this " hard cider campaign " that the 
effectiveness of the political procession as a means of 
excitement is supposed to have been discovered ; and 
never before had the political procession been so much 
used. 

Webster's part was to deliver some powerful and 
dignified speeches at Saratoga, New York and Rich- 
mond. He was in great demand, and, if he had accepted 
all the invitations, would not have had a day or a night 
to himself. More than fifteen different towns claimed 
him for their Fourth of July. The universal wish to 
hear him. the very large reliance on him as a guide, 
the confidence in his reasoning and opinions have caused 

383 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

many besides himself to wonder at his inability to be 
even nominated for the Presidency. But the success of 
the coonskins and the log cabin shows the cause. 

Neither he nor Clay, even supposing their intellectual 
and rhetorical ability to have been ten times what it was, 
could come up to the method of those " funny tricks " 
which alone at that time convinced the masses of a 
man's fitness for the Presidency. In our own times of 
Cleveland, Roosevelt and Taft there would have been 
much more of a chance for Webster and Clay. But 
in the period of 1830 to 1850, of that most extraordinary 
phase of the spirit of Democracy, there was practically 
none. 

Webster's Saratoga speech stands out conspicuously 
in the history of his life and in the history of that time. 
He had prepared himself, it seems, very carefully for it, 
and it was to be delivered at a mass meeting near his 
old home at Salisbury, New Hampshire. But that 
meeting having been postponed and Webster being at 
Saratoga arguing a case before the New York Court of 
Errors, he was urged so strongly to appear at a mass 
meeting to be held immediately at Saratoga, that he 
could not very well refuse ; so he gave them the well- 
thought-out Salisbury speech.^ 

It was a partisan speech, and has usually been 
thought the best speech of that sort he ever made. An 
immense crowd assembled from all the neighboring 
region just as immense crowds were assembling all over 
the country at the slightest suggestion of a political dis- 
cussion; for the whole Union was deeply stirred, felt 
itself in a revolution and was seeking light. The great 
meeting was held on a little eminence in a fine grove 
of pines ; and just before it assembled a heavy thunder 
storm and deluge of rain threatened to spoil the day. 
But the storm passed, the people assembled more en- 
thusiastic than ever, and after Webster had been speak- 



• Dearborn, History of Salisbury, p. 105. 

384 



HARD CIDER CAMPAIGN 

ing a few minutes the platform on which he stood with 
the chairman, officials and distinguished guests went 
down with a crash. He was the first to climb up on 
some fragments of the staging and announce in his 
powerful voice that no one was hurt and that the great 
Whig platform was a more solid structure than the one 
that had sunk beneath their feet. Confidence and good 
humor were at once restored ; a " red pedlar wagon with 
sloping sides and a top about eight inches wide " 
was brought for him to stand on, and balancing himself 
on this he took up his argument again as if nothing had 
happened. 

It was largely an attack upon the sub-treasury plan 
and its attendant Van Buren principle " that the govern- 
ment has nothing to do with providing a currency for 
the country." He described humorously how Van 
Buren, not daring to support a United States Bank 
and not daring to support any of the pet bank schemes 
and other disastrous measures of his predecessor Jack- 
son, not daring, in short, to go forward or backward, 
had escaped into this plan of abandoning all efforts to 
regulate the currency. We must forgive Webster for 
his heavy attack on the sub-treasury, because his attack 
was mainly upon the absurdities that Van Buren wanted 
to add to it ; one of the worst of which was that the 
debts due the government and debts paid by the govern- 
ment must all be discharged in specie, and banks and 
bank notes, whether redeemable in specie or not, must 
all be driven out of existence. 

In his attack on this specie delusion Webster was 
unquestionably right ; and it was the most powerful 
part of his speech. 

" Government pays in large sums, to large contractors ; and 
to these it may pay gold and silver. But do the gold and 
silver reach those whom the contractor employs? On the 
|i contrary, the contractors deal as they see fit with those whom 
they employ or of whom they purchase. The Army and Navy 
are fed and clothed by contract; the materials for expensive 

25 38s 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

custom houses, fortifications, for the Cumberland Road, and 
for other pubHc works, are all supplied by contract. Large 
contractors flock to Washington, and receive their tons of 
gold and silver ; but do they carry it with them to Maine, 
Mississippi, Michigan, or wherever their residence and voca- 
tion may be? No, not a dollar; but selling it for depreciated 
paper, the contractor swells his previous profits by this added 
premium, and pays off those he owes in depreciated bank 
notes." 

He g-ave a most valuable description of American 
labor and manufacturing of that day. The great inter- 
ests, the great industrial plants, combinations of capital, 
enormous department stores and jobbing houses of our 
time were unknown. Pretty much all industries and 
manufacturing were carried on by individuals employing 
a few workmen. " Nine-tenths of the whole labor of 
this country," he said, " is performed by those who 
cultivate the land they or their fathers own, or who, in 
their workshops, employ some little capital of their own 
and mix it up with their manual toil. No such thing 
exists in other countries." It was indeed an ideal sys- 
tem as we look back at it. The laboring classes he 
described enjoyed good living, comfortable homes and 
educated their children. But the Jacksonian and Van 
Buren financial experiments had ruined millions of 
them, reduced them to poverty, and in the confusion 
of the currency the rich had had a glorious chance to 
grow richer while the poor grew poorer. He described 
the methods by which contractors, ship-owners and. 
capitalists had recently made sudden and enormous for- 
tunes out of the Jacksonian muddle and the misfortunes 
of the poor. If ever there was a piece of humbuggery on 
earth it was the pose of old Jackson that he was the 
special friend of the masses. No one has ever appeared 
in American politics who has ruined so many of them. 

It was in giving instances of all this that he amused 
and pleased everybody by quoting some very practical 
and pointed comments of his favorite boatman, Seth 
Peterson. It no dotibt gave him the greatest pleasure to | 
make Seth famous. 

386 



HARD CIDER CAMPAIGN 

" Now, gentlemen, though he will be astonished, or 
amused, that I should tell the story before such a vast and 
respectable assemblage as this, I will place this argument of 
Seth Peterson, sometimes farmer and sometimes fisherman on 
the coast of Massachusetts, stated to me while pulling an oar 
with each hand, and with the sleeves of his red shirt rolled up 
above his elbows, against the reasonings, the theories and the 
speeches of the administration and all its friends, in or out of 
Congress, and take the verdict of the country and of the 
civilized world, whether he has not the best of the argument." 

Then he described Peterson and his happy, vigorous 
life on sea and shore, the unencumbered acres of his 
little farm which his thrift and labor had won, his com- 
fortable house, and his children all going- to school. It 
was a picture he loved ; he loved that sort of man ; and 
he described other types of American prosperity which 
the Jacksonian experiments were tearing down. 

This is one of the speeches that Webster is supposed 
to have delivered in a fit of drunkenness ; that is to say, 
one of the best speeches of his life was delivered by him 
when he was so drunk that he could not walk, and yet 
he held a large mixed audience for nearly three hours 
with an argument of such intellectual force that it made 
a most profound impression upon the whole country. 
Has there ever been such a glorification of drink? 

Mr. Charles A. Stetson, who was with him and sat 
on one end of the narrow top of the pedlar's wagon, 
while President King, of Columbia College, sat on the 
other, says that in balancing himself on the narrow top 
only eight inches wide Webster had no proper support 
for his toes or his heels and spoke in that position for 
two hours and forty minutes. He was so exhausted 
and stiff that he had to be helped down, helped to a car- 
riage, " put his knee to the step and fairly crept into 
the carriage." Stetson felt sure that a charge of drunk- 
enness would be made; and soon heard from some one 
in the crowd, " What a fine speech ! But wasn't he 
bloody tight ? " « 

"Wilkinson, Daniel Webster, A Vindication, p. 119. 

387 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

At Patchogue, on Long Island, he delivered a speech 
which he took no pains to preserve, evidently because it 
was a stump speech. But it has been dug out from the 
newspapers of the day and is valuable because it shows 
his style in that form of oratory. He was telling his 
hearers not to let the Democrats deceive them with all 
sorts of cunning words and phrases about Democracy 
and aristocrats. 

" How do you do when you go out into the South Bay to 
shoot ducks? Don't you bough 'em all round, and manoeuvre 
with the most specious appearances on the outside and in 
front? But isn't there an old King's arm behind all, and isn't 
there plenty of good gunpowder and lots of double B shot ; and 
when you get well in among 'em, don't you let 'em have it? 
Now, then, what I say to you is don't be web-footed ! " 

But a little farther on he could not restrain his liter- 
ary taste, and in describing how the Democrats were 
talking of nothing but sub-treasury, sub-treasury, sub- 
treasury, he said it reminded him of the old classical 
tale of Orpheus going to seek Eui-ydice and shouting 
the beautiful name until all nature was full of it. 

" Eurydice the woods, 
Eurydice the floods, 
Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rang." 

And with our government it is — 

" Sub-Treasury the woods, 
Sub-Treasury the floods, 
Sub-Treasury the rocks and hollow mountains ring." 

Harrison and Tyler swept the country, receiving 234 
out of the 294 electoral votes, and leaving only 60 to 
the Democratic candidates. Van Buren and Johnson. 
Harrison made Webster his Secretary of State, and one 
of the new secretary's first duties was to keep the Presi- 
dent from making too much of an exhibition of himself 
in his inaugural address. He was a great reader of 
Plutarch and tried to make up for a deficient education 
by classical allusions in excess even of the excessive 

388 



SECRETARY OF STATE 

taste of that time. Being asked after the battle of 
Tippecanoe about the behavior of his men, he said that 
" every one of them was a Leonidas, an Epaminondas or 
a Horatius codes." Webster had a severe struggle 
with him over his preparation of the inaugural, and 
returning from the White House late one afternoon Mrs. 
Seaton, at whose house he was living, remarked that he 
looked exhausted and worried and asked if anything 
had happened. " You would think that something had 
happened," he said, " if you knew what I have done. 
I have killed seventeen Roman proconsuls." 

The overwhelming vote for Harrison undoubtedly 
meant that the people had had enough of the Jackson 
and Van Buren Democratic methods of finance ; but 
it did not altogether mean that they wanted a bank as 
a financial method of the government. Some of those 
who voted for Harrison and Tyler were still in the bank 
delusion ; but many, even many Whigs, were not. The 
two candidates represented this divided feeling. Harri- 
son was moderately in favor of a bank. Tyler was 
opposed to a bank.^'* 

General Harrison died about a month after his inau- 
guration in 1841. Having a majority in both Houses 
of Congress, the Whigs repealed the excellent sub- 
treasury law and then passed two acts to establish a 
national bank. Tyler, who succeeded to the Presidency, 
was a Virginian, and not a Whig. The name Whig had 
been applied to him only in that perversion of it which 
was used to describe those who supported the South 
Carolina nullifiers against Jackson. Tyler was, in fact, 
a State-rights Democrat v/ho, in accordance with the 
peculiar method used by the Whigs in those days, had 
been put on the ticket with Harrison merely to catch 
southern votes. He had not vetoed the repeal of the 
sub-treasury law. but he vetoed both the acts creating 
a United States Bank ; and the Whig majority was not 
strong enough to pass them over his veto. That for- 

" Webster, Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 345. 

389 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

tunately was the end of all attempts to restore the bank, 
and it passed into history. 

In 1846 the Democrats restored the sub-treasury 
plan ; and in the Civil War Congress adopted the 
national banking system, by which banks throughout the 
country were allowed to issue currency when they had 
deposited a slightly larger amount of government bonds 
with the government at Washington. By this means 
these national banks throughout the country tend to 
keep the currency stable and of equal value in all places. 
That had been the most important function of the 
United States Bank by means of its branches in different 
States. The United States Bank's other function of 
acting as a place of deposit for the public money is 
now well filled by the sub-treasury plan of leaving the 
money in the hands of the collectors under bond and to 
be paid out by Treasury orders. The United States 
Bank's third function of lending money to the govern- 
ment was accomplished on an enormous scale in the 
Civil War by raising money on bonds directly from 
the people and from the banks in the national banking 
system which had to own and deposit at Washington 
sufficient bonds to secure their issue of currency. 

In this way the financial system of the country 
was finally worked out to success through more than 
two generations by a process of evolution from the 
original crudeness of a currency of varying value in 
different States and of a government that did not know 
exactly where to deposit or keep the money it had on 
hand. In the beginning of this process there is no 
question that the Bank of the United States was of 
infinite usefulness and that Webster's principles and 
arguments were originally sound. But he and the 
Whigs could not see that there were other ways of 
attaining solvency and stability, and that to allow such 
a powerful and growing institution as the Bank to fasten 
itself any longer like a leech on the government would 
bring ruinous corruption. 

390 



SECRETARY OF STATE 

When, therefore, President Harrison died and his 
successor Tyler vetoed the Bank bills, there was a 
serious break and much ill feeling between Tyler and 
those of the Whigs, a very large number of them, who 
still believed that a United States Bank was an absolute 
necessity. All the cabinet officers resigned except Web- 
ster, whom Harrison had made Secretary of State, and 
who had started on the great negotiation with England 
over the boundary between Maine and Canada. Web- 
ster was no longer fanatical about the Bank. He be- 
lieved that one of some sort sufficient to keep the cur- 
rency stable would be a valuable help, and was indeed a 
necessity; but he would go about obtaining it in a 
moderate way.^^ 

He tried his utmost to prevent the break between 
Tyler and the Whigs. It would ruin the Whig party, 
he said, and help neither the bank nor the country. 
When Tyler vetoed the first bank bill Webster urged 
the leaders of the party not to press another similar bill 
and not to attack and abuse their own President. But 
they would not be restrained. Henry Clay exhausted 
his power of ridicule and sarcasm in the Senate in de- 
nouncing Tyler ; Whig newspapers attacked him in edi- 
torials and prominent Whigs wrote bitter and abusive 
letters. They introduced in Congress another bill for 
creating a " Federal Corporation of the United States " 
which was a national bank without the power of dis- 
counting local notes in the States. This they thought 
they could force Tyler to accept by denouncing him in 
Congress and in the press. Their attacks naturally de- 
termined him the other way. He vetoed the bill and 
the breach was complete. 

When the cabinet began resigning Webster regarded 
it as a mere continuation of the plan of the party to 
harass their own President, and he refused to imitate 
them. He believed in the necessity of a national bank, 

"Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 344-352, 358. 

391 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

but he also believed that in spite of its loss the President 
would unite with Congress in overcoming the difficulties 
of the situation b}^ other means ; " and it is to the union 
of the Whig party — by which I mean the whole party, 
the Whig President, the Whig Congress and the Whig 
people — that I look for a realization of our wishes." 
Moreover he would not in any event resign suddenly 
without notice, as the others had done, and throw into 
disorder the unusually delicate relations of the country. 
Although the Massachusetts members of the Congress 
approved of his stand, he was nevertheless severely 
criticized for it by other members of his party. The 
Whigs were, in fact, again disorganized and demoral- 
ized, and Webster was fortunate in strength of reputa- 
tion and character sufficient to support him in that inde- 
pendent position which enabled him to stay in the 
cabinet. From his cabinet position he negotiated the 
Treaty of Washington, or Ashburton Treaty, one of 
the most conspicuous services of his life. 



392 



XV 

THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

The negotiations with England about the boundary 
between Maine and Canada had been begun by Webster 
before the death of General Harrison, Besides the 
boundary dispute there were several other serious topics, 
the destruction of the steamboat Caroline, the trial of 
McLeod for murder and the rescue of slaves from the 
brig Creole. 

The Caroline was an American vessel which had been 
used to carry supplies across the Niagara River to the 
Canadian insurgents, who in 1837 had begun the famous 
rebellion in Canada which resulted in the modern self- 
governing system of some of the British colonies. A 
party of Canadian loyalists went to seize her at Navy 
Island, which was in British territory, but seeing her 
lying under the American shore opposite they crossed 
over, set her on fire and adrift, and she was carried 
over Niagara Falls. In the struggle to seize her an 
American citizen named Durfree was killed. The Brit- 
ish government explained this hostile invasion of our 
territory as an excusable and necessary measure of self- 
defence in suppressing the rebellion among her Canadian 
subjects. But while our people were still doubtful 
! whether this explanation was satisfactory, a man named 
Alexander McLeod appeared in the State of New York 
and boasted that he had been with the invading party 
and had killed Durfree. He was arrested and tried for 
murder under the law of New York. 

This gave the English a grievance. Their govern- 
ment, they said, having explained their seizure of the 
Caroline to be a public act and necessary measure in 
suppression of the rebellion, any killing that took place 
in the seizure was an act of war and not murder. But 

393 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the New York authorities pressed the murder trial, 
popular feeling in both countries was deeply stirred, 
and there was no little risk of hostilities between the 
two great divisions of the Anglo-Saxon race. In fact, 
England was preparing for war; her Mediterranean 
fleet was assembling at Gibraltar; a home fleet of 
steamer frigates was ready for a descent upon the 
coast of the United States, and her minister at Wash- 
ington was believed to have instructions to demand 
his passports if McLeod were executed. 

The situation was made worse in the winter of 1841- 
42 by the brig Creole, a vessel engaged in carrying a 
cargo of merchandise and slaves from Richmond to New 
Orleans. The slaves rose upon the master and crew 
and took the vessel into the port of Nassau in the 
British West Indies, where the authorities set the slaves 
at liberty. England had some years before abolished 
slavery in all her colonies and was vigorously suppress- 
ing the slave trade on the coast of Africa ; so that this 
rescue of American slaves at Nassau was very exasper- 
ating to the whole southern interest in the United States 
and seemed to foreshadow, like so many other events, 
more and more interference with slavery. 

When Webster became Secretary of State in March, 
1841, the two governments had already agreed to settle 
the Maine boundary by a commission to meet in Wash- 
ington. But this might all be broken up by the McLeod 
aflfair. Webster had been in oflice only a few days when 
the British minister formally demanded McLeod's re- 
lease. Webster thereupon instructed the Attorney- 
General to go to Lockport, where McLeod was being 
tried, and furnish the prisoner's counsel with the official 
evidence that the attack upon the Caroline was a public 
act and political one, and the prisoner not in any way 
responsible before the ordinary State tribunals. At the 
same time he explained to the British minister, and 
through him' to the British government, that the Federal 
government at Washington had no power to take a pris- 

394 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

oner from the authorities of a State or to prevent his 
being tried. The Federal government was doing its 
utmost to secure his acquittal in the State court by 
showing that his killing of Durfree was the act of a 
soldier and not of a citizen; and that was all they 
could do. 

This was all very sound from our point of view. 
But suppose the court and jury in New York, acting 
under the influence of popvilar excitement, should con- 
vict McLeod of murder. In other words, a single State 
court in a community bordering upon Canada, largely 
in sympathy with the Canadian rebellion, and intensely 
aroused against England, had it in its power to com- 
mit the Federal government and the whole country to 
war. There is now a statute for the removal of such 
cases into the courts of the United States. But that 
necessity had not been foreseen in Webster's time and 
he was in great anxiety as to what might happen in 
New York. The anxiety was by no means imaginary ; 
for the prisoner's counsel, hoping to secure a more 
dispassionate hearing, took a writ of habeas corpus 
to the Supreme Court of New York asking it to dis- 
charge their client on the ground suggested by Webster, 
and that court, though supposed to be far above popular 
clamor, refused to discharge the prisoner and remanded 
him to trial. 

Meantime Webster was dealing with the British gov- 
ernment on the question of the seizure of the Caroline, 
explaining that it was entirely distinct from what the 
New York courts might do with McLeod, that it was 
a violation of the sanctity of our territory, a violation 
of the laws of nations, and besides the avowal of it as a 
public act to save McLeod, there must be on the part of 
Great Britain more decided expressions of regret and 
excuse. He deprecated hostile feelings and hostiHties 
and urged the importance of " such a spirit of candor, 
justice and mutual respect as shall give assurance of the 
long continuance of peace between the two countries." 

395 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

With this great question in abeyance ; the trial of 
McLeod postponed until October; the press of the dis- 
organized Whig party pretty generally condemning 
Webster for remaining in office with what they called 
a renegade President ; innumerable letters from Whigs 
of a different mind pouring in upon him and applaud- 
ing- his remaining in office as an act of high patriotism 
essential to the safety of the country; the Democrats 
in Congress denouncing him for having attempted to 
interfere with the administration of justice in the sov- 
ereign State of New York, and for having compromised 
the honor and dignity of the nation by what they called 
his blundering and weak-kneed communications with 
the government of Great Britain ; all this with Con- 
gress in. session during the whole hot summer made it 
a trying season for Webster. No longer young, with 
eyes and head inflamed by his annual attack of what is 
now called hay fever, and long ago weary of the " din 
of politics," he would have been only too glad to break 
away; and no doubt he often contemplated with secret 
pleasure almost any possibility that would relieve him. 
" You may hear of me soon, for aught I know, at Marsh- 
field, with my friend Peterson," he wrote to Edward 
Everett in announcing Everett's appointment as minister 
to England. '* It will be no bad result of things," he 
again writes, " that shall send me to Boston and Marsh- 
field again. Oh Marshfield ! and the sea, the sea ! " 

Not till October did relief come. McLeod proved 
an alibi and was acquitted. This alibi saved a war; 
for judging from the Supreme Court decision the de- 
fence of his having acted as a public soldier of Canada 
might not have been accepted by the New York trial 
judges or by the jury. Webster sent to the next session 
of Congress a bill, which was finally passed, for remov- 
ing from State to Federal courts all cases involving 
questions with foreig'n governments. 

We find Webster at this time complaining of lack 
of money. Being cut off from the practice of his pro- 

396 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

fession, the salary of Secretary of State was obviously 
not sufficient for his land buying, experimental farm- 
ing, and pleasures at Marshfield. his new farming ven- 
ture in Illinois and the support of his family at Wash- 
ington, with incidental entertainment there and at 
iMarshfield. But the important thing now is his ne- 
gotiation with England about the northeast boundary 
between Maine and Canada leading up to what has be- 
come known as the Washington or x\shburton Treaty 
of 1842. 

This boundary question had defied the skill of diplo- 
matists for fifty years ; but for the last ten years one 
of the difficulties in settHng it had been that in all that 
time, except a few months, Lord Palmerston had been 
the foreign secretary of the British government. It was 
a Wliig administration, the famous Whig administration 
that had begim the reform bill, the free trade movement, 
and self-government in the colonies, and yet Palmerston 
as foreign secretary had some very decided Tory traits. 
He had been originally a Tory and he never became a 
complete Whig. He carried on a foreign policy of 
such aggressiveness that there may be said to have 
been a touch of jingoism in it. He was a very difficult 
man for Americans to deal with without going to war. 
American politicians he regarded as entirely too aggres- 
sive, which, being translated, meant that America was 
standing out for her full rights instead of yielding what 
he wanted and contributing to the brilliancy of his repu- 
tation as France. Turkey and Egypt had done. 

With such a man as this at the head of British diplo- 
macy and McLeod likely to be convicted, Webster's 
chances of a peaceful negotiation had been very slight 
in that summer of 1841. When it became known in 
England that the Supreme Court of New York had 
refused to discharge McLeod on habeas corpus and 
rejected the defence that he was a public soldier, a 
serious crisis was approaching. But fortunately for 
everybody, about the time that ISIcLeod was acquitted, 

397 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the famous Whig ministry was defeated, and Palmer- 
ston passed out of power. The ground was now cleared 
of one very serious obstacle, and Webster had one of 
the great opportunities of his life. 

The acquittal of IMcLeod alone might not have been 
enough, Webster intended to settle the boundary, the 
impressment of sailors, the right of search, the Caroline 
affair, and the Creole affair by mutual yielding. But 
concession of this sort was the very thing which Palmer- 
ston detested. His last acts and words in retiring from 
office seemed to render any settlement without war 
extremely difficult if not impossible ; and he afterwards 
as leader of the opposition in Parliament attacked the 
treaty made by W^ebster as ruinous to the interest, the 
tranquillity and the honor of England. 

But under his successor in office. Lord Aberdeen, the 
situation was very much more favorable, although the 
administration was Tory, under the leadership of Sir 
Robert Peel, the founder of the modern Conservative 
party. Lord Ashburton, whose wife was an American, 
the daughter of a United States Senator, Mr. William 
Bingham, of Philadelphia, was sent as a commissioner 
to Washington to negotiate a settlement of all diffi- 
culties. Edward Everett, an intimate and trusted friend 
of Webster, was our minister at London. Both Web- 
ster and Everett by their scholarship, their eloquence, 
their literary ability, and their world-wide reputation, 
commanded no little respect and admiration in England. 
Webster's recent visit to England had made him per- 
sonally known to prominent statesmen. Incidentally 
he may have sounded some of them on the subjects in 
dispute ; learned their point of view and opinions, and 
very likely inspired them with confidence in his desire 
for a peaceful settlement. 

Under these favorable circumstances, therefore, the 
winter of 1841-42 was spent in getting ready for the 
negotiation. The next great obstacle to be got rid of 
was the public feeling on the question in the State of 

398 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

Maine. The boundary between Maine and Canada had 
been described with perfect clearness in the Treaty of 
1783. But it carried Maine so close to the St. Law- 
rence River that England, in spite of her assent to the 
treaty, would never accept that boundary, and with 
characteristic zeal for new territory claimed a line much 
farther south. Maine claimed the fulfilment of the 
exact and plain words of the treaty; and during- the 
last fifty years the controversy had always been con- 
ducted on that basis, each side trying to convince the 
other of its full claim. Webster had made up his mind 
that the dispute could never be settled in that way ; 
feeling had been too much aroused ; neither side would 
yield its whole claim. The only possible method was 
to compromise — each side yield a little ; exchange equiva- 
lents, as the phrase was — and agree on. a conven- 
tional line different from that of the treaty. But Maine 
had been struggling with the subject so long, had had 
I troops on her frontier, almost a border warfare, and 
was so convinced of the perfect clearness of the words 
of the treaty that the suggestion of yielding any of her 
territory roused the indignation of her whole people. 
No newspapers of either political party had ever dared 
take up such a suggestion ; but Webster found a way 
of getting at it. 

" The grand stroke was to get the previous consent of 
Maine and Massachusetts. Nobody else had attempted this ; 
it had occurred to nobody else ; it was a movement of great 
deUcacy, and of very doubtful result. But it was made, with 
how much skill and judgment in the manner, you must judge; 
and it succeeded, and to this success the fortunate result of 
the whole negotiation is to be attributed." (Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvi, p. 397.) 

The grand stroke, it was afterwards charged, was 

j the corruption of the party press in Maine with the 

Secret Service money of the national government. The 

consent of Massachusetts was necessary because, when 

in 1820 she had set off the district of Maine as a separate 

399 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

State, the controversy was going on about the disputed 
territory, the boundary had never been marked and 
Massachusetts still retained a certain interest in the land 
in dispute. But the excited people of Maine were the 
difficult ones for Webster to deal with, and it seems he 
won them over by employing and paying out of the 
Secret Service fund in the hands of the President a 
certain person who caused the necessary articles to be 
prepared and printed in an independent religious journal 
of wide circulation among all parties in the State/ 

Maine and Massachusetts, having been thus won 
over, appointed commissioners to represent their inter- 
ests in the dispute and act with Webster at Washington. 
These commissioners, being still somewhat inclined to 
adhere to the original line of the Treaty of 1783 and con- 
cede as little as possible, gave more or less trouble. 
But they were necessary parties and had to be managed. 

In the summer of 1842 Lord Ashburton arrived; 
and it was really an act of cruelty to have set all these 
distinguished men to work for nearly a whole summer 
in the torrid heat of Washington to settle one of the 
momentous treaties of history. We have now learned 
better how to live ; and the whole negotiation would, 
in our time, be transferred to the seashore of New Eng- 
land. The Maine and Massachusetts men seem to have 
refrained from telling their sufferings. But Lord Ash- 
burton, an elderly man. and totally unaccustomed to 
such a summer climate, declared himself on the point 
of throwing up his commission. 

My Dear Mr. Webster: J^^y ^' ^^■ 

I must throw mj^self on your compassion to contrive some- 
how or other to get me released. I contrive to crawl about 
in these heats by day and pass my nights in a sleepless fever. 
In short, I shall positively not outlive this affair, if it is to be 
much longer prolonged. I had hoped that these gentlemen from 
the northeast would be equally averse to this roasting. Could 
not you press them to come to the point, and say whether we 

* Curtis, Life of Webster, vol. ii, p. 284. 

400 




MAP OF 

NORTH EAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

BOUNDARY OF TREATY OF 1783 

1842 



li 



il 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

can or cannot agree? I do not see why I should be kept wait- 
ing while Maine and Massachusetts settle their accounts with 
the General Government. 

I am rather apprehensive that there is an inclination some- 
where to keep this negotiation in suspense on grounds uncon- 
nected with the mere difficulties of the case itself. Pray, save 
me from these profound politicians, for my nerves will not stand 
so much cunning wisdom. (Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, 
p. 3I5-) 

This is a good sample of many notes that were ex- 
changed. In this intimate way Webster conducted the 
negotiation on the plan he had adopted of changing 
totally the method of procedure. 

The treaty had described the eastern boundary of 
Maine as beginning at the source of the St. Croix River 
and extending north to the ridge or watershed which 
divides " those rivers that empty themselves into the 
river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the At- 
lantic Ocean," thence southwestwardly along that water- 
shed " to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut 
River," in the northeastern corner of New Hampshire. 

When we look at a map of the country this boundary 
seems plain enough, and apparently should have occa- 
sioned no difficulty. It is true that in the extreme north- 
ern portion the watershed would make a somewhat 
crooked wandering line; a troublesome one to trace 
on the ground no doubt ; but by no means impossible. 
It had been explored and could readily be marked. 
The real difficulty seems to have been that the streams 
flowing into the St. Lawrence at that point being very 
short brought the American line close to that river, 
leaving Canada only a very narrow strip along it ; so 
narrow, indeed, that at many places it was only about 
twenty miles wide. 

In other words, America, from both a strategical 
and practical point of view, seemed to the British to 
occupy a controlling position on a long strip of the St. 
Lawrence below Quebec : would, in fact, it was thought, 
command the main entrance to the British possessions, 
26 401 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and almost cut off Nova Scotia and New Brunswick 
from the rest of Canada. The direct line of travel from 
New Brunswick to Quebec was cut off and Canadian 
travellers would have to pass through Maine or go 
roundabout. 

Accordingly, we find Great Britain insisting that 
the treaty intended something different from its words ; 
that the true line was much farther south ; and in order 
to make as large a claim as possible she asserted that 
the northern boundary really meant by the treaty must 
be the St. John's River, which it will be observed flows 
across Maine considerably south of the watershed in 
a great curve, with the convex portion of the curve to 
the northward. This, it was said, was a natural boundary 
that would require no trouble to mark. But the im- 
portant part in British eyes was that it withdrew the 
American boundary some fifty miles from: that water- 
shed that seemed dangerously near the St. Lawrence 
below Quebec. 

The old Treaty of 1783 closing the Revolutionary 
War had been quite generally regarded in England as 
entirely too liberal. The statesmen who made it had 
been violently attacked for surrendering everything to 
the Americans. In accordance with the imperialistic 
policy of absorbing and keeping everything, even the 
smallest trifles, England had prolonged some of the 
controversies of the Revolution and left them unsettled 
for many years. For some years she would not abandon 
the posts and forts that belonged to us along the Great 
Lakes. She continued the right of searching our ships 
as an imperial privilege until we had to fight the War of 
1812 to get rid of it. In the negotiations for the treaty 
which closed that war, she had at first insisted on con- 
trolling the whole south shore of the St. Lawrence and 
Niagara Rivers, as a military protection to Canada, 
Even after the treaty she still claimed the right of 
search, or right of visit, as it was now politely called, 
to obtain her own subjects when she was engaged in war 

402 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

with any other nation ; and it was one of the questions 
Webster had to settle. The treaty had, in fact, not 
settled this question at all. It had merely stopped hos- 
tilities and left the question to settle itself. 

Her claim that the St. John's River was the northern 
boundary of Maine she had adhered to stiffly for fifty 
years. It was a claim so obviously in violation of the 
words of the treaty that it caused great irritation in 
America, especially in Maine, wdiere bloodshed on the 
frontier was with difficulty prevented and every year 
it was feared that there would be some violent outbreak 
or conflict with the Canadians which would force both 
nations into a war. Webster abandoned all the maps, 
memoranda, arguments and material that had accumu- 
lated on both sides as irrelevant for present purposes and 
pressed for an agreement that would fix upon some 
conventional line that would give neither side all it 
wanted, and yet give both enough to satisfy feeling and 
honor. 

Great Britain's claim might possibly be looked upon 
as a petition to be relieved from the strict words of a 
treaty which she had improvidently signed under trying 
circumstances more than half a century before and which 
brought America dangerously close to the entrance of 
Canada. Our object was permanent peace with the 
English race ; we had ample territory for our own pro- 
tection ; it was not necessary that we should be always 
straining for the last scrap; it was not necessary that 
we should occupy a menacing position on the St. Law- 
rence ; w^e could afford to withdraw a little from the 
watershed line if that would wipe out all uneasiness and 
cement permanent good feeling. We would still re- 
main near enough for military purposes. 

These considerations were, of course, never put in 
such a blunt way in the negotiations. Argument was 
avoided as much as possible ; everything was suggestion 
and pleasantry ; and under the fierce rays of the dog 
star during that hot summer in Washington, Webster 

403 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

kept leading the commissioners and his lordship back 
and forth among equivalents, as he called the suggested 
exchanges of patches of territory and supposed advan- 
tages. 

It was finally settled by taking the St. John's as a 
boundary part of the way. The eastern boundary start- 
ing from the source of the St. Croix River and going 
north stopped when it reached the curve of the St. 
John's, and followed up that river instead of going 
straight on to the watershed as in the old Treaty of 
1783. But the St. John's was followed only about half- 
way round the curve to the mouth of the St. Francis 
River; thence the line went northwestwardly along the 
St. Francis to Lake Pohemgamock. This was the most 
northerly point, and from there the boundary went 
southwesterly until it reached the watershed, which it 
followed to the source of the Connecticut, in the north- 
eastern corner of New Hampshire. 

This was giving Great Britain less than she claimed 
of the disputed territory ; but it was giving her some- 
what more than was given to Maine. To make up for 
this Great Britain gave Maine the privilege of sending 
lumber and other products down the St. John's River 
free of toll through the British possessions, and the 
United States paid Maine and Massachusetts $300,000 
for the territory they gave up, which was believed to be 
more than it was worth at that time. 

This having been accomplished and the trouble- 
some State commissioners disposed of, Webster and 
Lord Ashburton had very little difficulty in settling the 
rest of the boundary. There was a strip of land lying 
north of New Hampshire, ^^ermont and New York 
which had always been supposed to belong to those 
States; but when the more exact location of the forty- 
fifth parallel of latitude, named in the old Treaty of 1783, 
was established, this strip was found to be in British 
territory. It was surrendered, however, to those States 
as one of the equivalents for concessions made by Maine ; 

404 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

but as this surrender inured to the benefit of the three 
States and the United States and not to Maine and 
Massachusetts, the money consideration of $300,000 had 
to be paid to the two latter. The rest of the boundary 
on Canada, passing westward to the St. Lawrence and 
through the Great Lakes Huron and Superior, gave no 
difficulty. 

The obtaining of the strip lying north of New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont and New York was very important be- 
cause it gave us Rouse's Point at the northern end of 
Lake Champlain, where the narrowness of the water 
passage gave a fort placed on the point complete control 
of navigation to and from Canada. That was the place 
of real military importance. If it w^ere in control of 
England she could send an army as far as Albany in 
four days. If we controlled it we could prevent such 
a rapid invasion. The supposed dangers to England of 
the watershed on the Maine boundary were largely 
imaginary. The country there was very mountainous 
and unsuited to the movetnents of armies. There were 
two lines of march for an attack upon Canada — one 
by Rouse's Point, the other up the Kennebec through 
Maine, and thence by the Chaudiere to Quebec, the old 
route that General Arnold took in the Revolution, This 
last was unchanged by Webster's treaty, and as his 
treaty gave us Rouse's Point, it gave us about all the 
military advantage there was in the situation. 

As a military defence to the State of New York 
there was no situation equal in importance to Rouse's 
Point except the Narrows, at the entrance to the harbor 
of New York City. Webster's obtaining of the free 
navigation of the St. John's River through New Bruns- 
wick became in a few years of even more value than was 
at first supposed, because it was used not only for lum- 
ber but for the transportation to tidewater of valuable 
agricultural products as the fertile valleys of northern 
Maine were gradually settled by farmers. - 



Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 397, 402. 

405 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

So all the anxiety of fifty years, all the apprehen- 
sion of war was settled, and to most historians it has 
seemed that America and England have been better 
friends ever since. It was a noble piece of work, they 
say. Webster had drawn both the thunder and light- 
ning out of the gathering- clouds. But " any sensible 
and honest man," Abolitionist Theodore Parker informs 
us, "could have done the work; " and Parker insisted 
that it was a bad bargain, that Webster even then in the 
interest of the slave power had basely surrendered terri- 
tory to avoid a war in which the southern slaves w^ould 
have gained their liberty. 

" If England had claimed clear down to the Connecticut, I 
think the southern masters of the North would have given 
up Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock, rather than risk to the 
chances of a British war the twelve hundred million dollars 
invested in slaves. Men who live in straw houses think twice 
before they scatter fire-brands abroad. England knew well 
with whom she had to deal." (Sermon on Death of Webster, 
p. 48.) 

In regard to the seizure of the Caroline in the 
Niagara River, Webster, in several letters to Lord Ash- 
burton, laid down the principles of international law, 
which make national territory inviolable and forbid 
invasion by an armed force from a neighboring nation. 
To these principles, being general propositions. Lord 
Ashburton assented in writing. This was something 
gained for the future ; but it did not settle the Caroline 
casCj or constitute an apology for that invasion; and it 
was a long time before Webster could persuade his 
lordship to close the correspondence with the following 
sentence : " Looking back to what passed, at this distance 1 
of time, what is, perhaps, most to be regretted is, that ^ 
some explanation or apology for this occurrence was not | 
immediately made." 

It took Webster two days to persuade his lordship } 
to use the word apology in addition to explanation. 
But that being done the whole sentence could be diplo- | 

406 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

matically construed as an apology and the Caroline inci- 
dent was closed forever. 

Great Britain had claimed the right to search our 
vessels on the coast of Africa, even in time of peace, in 
order to see if they really carried American papers and 
were rightfully flying the American flag, because that 
flag and the flags of other nations were fraudulently 
used to cover the slave trade which Great Britain was 
trying to suppress. We had for many years protested 
against this search as unlawful, and England had as 
stiffly demanded that we should yield it to her benevolent 
endeavors in the suppression of the slave trade. She 
searched the vessels of other nations in the same way 
on the African coast ; and she was gradually regarding 
as an international privilege this right of search, or right 
of visit, as she now called it, which we had fought 
the War of 1812 to abolish. The other nations in seek- 
ing to settle the matter had obligingly walked straight 
into the trap England was preparing for them. France, 
Russia, Austria and Prussia had tentatively agreed with 
England to a quintuple convention, as it was called, 
allowing the exercise of a mutual right of search. 
This convention was not yet accepted as a binding treaty 
by the respective governments, but there was every 
probability that it would be, and the London Times was 
beginning to boast that the right of search would now be 
established as a rule of international law. 

It was, however, all knocked in the head by Webster 
and Ashburton, who in a clause of their treaty provided 
that both the United States and England should keep a 
squadron on the coast of Africa to enforce each its own 
laws against the slave trade by mutual co-operation. 
Each would attend to the instances of the misuse of its 
own flag. This obviously sensible and natural arrange- 
ment cut the ground from under England's last excuse 
for restoring her claim of an imperial right of search. 
The French government rejected the quintuple conven- 
tion ; and the right of search died from want of nutrition. 

407 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The Creole affair, in which the slaves seized the brig 
and took it into a British port, was practically impossible 
of solution. The southerners wanted it turned into a 
precedent which would give the owners of slaves an 
international right to demand the extradition of their 
human property. But this was out of the question. 
England was on her guard against it and would assent 
to nothing which by any possibility could be construed 
into a recognition on her part of the relation of master 
and slave. Webster, however, secured the insertion in 
the treaty of a clause providing for the mutual extradi- 
tion of persons accused of certain enumerated crimes. 
This was the beginning of the modern system of extra- 
dition treaties with various nations. 

So far as the Creole affair was concerned, Webster 
contended that when an American vessel with slaves on 
board was driven by stress of weather or other circum- 
stances into a British port, there should be no active 
interference by the local authorities with the condition 
of persons or things on board as established by the law 
of the vessel's country, so long as those persons and 
things remained on board of the vessel. To this Lord 
Ashburton said that he had no authority to assent ; but 
he gave assurance that under such circumstances there 
should be no " officious interference," no " further in- 
quisition than might be indispensable to enforce the 
observance of the municipal law, and the proper regula- 
tion of the harbors and waters." This was as near a 
settlement as they could come. 

On the question of impressment, as it had come to 
be called, the claim of Great Britain to take persons she 
considered her own subjects out of our ships in time of 
war and visit and search our ships for that purpose, 
that was a privilege, a token of the dominion of the seas, 
insignia of imperialism very dear to the British heart. 
It was supposed to involve the great imperial principle 
that once a subject always a subject; an Englishman 
could not expatriate himself, could not voluntarily join 
another nationality. The American doctrine that all 

408 



THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY DISPUTE 

men had the right of expatriation had always been 
abhorrent to the English ruling class. Lord Ashbur- 
ton, if he had assented to the American principle and 
flatly abandoned the English idea, would have been 
committing political and social suicide. At the same 
time he saw that the British claim was becoming unten- 
able. Events, especially the event of the growth of 
American power, were becoming too strong for it. So 
after much circumlocution of words, stating all the 
difficulties on both sides, he closed with the sentence, 
" I have much reason to hope that a satisfactory arrange- 
ment with respect to it may be made, so as to set at rest 
all apprehension and anxiety ; and I will only further re- 
peat the assurance of the sincere disposition of my gov- 
ernment favorably to consider all matters having for 
their object the promoting and maintaining undisturbed 
kind and friendly feelings with the United States." 
That was all ; but it was enough ; and the right of search 
silently disappeared from international controversies. 

So the troublesome questions were all disposed of. 
It was a great piece of work, and after the replies to 
Hayne and Calhoun perhaps the best service of Web- 
ster's life. All he had done was open to criticism, if one 
were determined to be a critic ; and there were not a few 
among the Democrats in Congress. Nothing he had 
done was positive enough ; everything would lead to 
future entanglements. In the boundary question he 
had given up to Great Britain vast territories which 
were ours by the plain words of the treaty Great Britain 
had signed at the close of the Revolution. 

Benton attacked the whole work as solemn and mys- 
terious humbuggery, mere bargain and sale, and an 
ignominious and dishonorable surrender of the highest 
interests of the country. A '' shame and injury " and 
" a solemn bamboozlement " were some of the pic- 
turesque expressions of the redoubtable Missourian. 
Buchanan also denounced it as a complete abandonment 
of the interests of the South and a complete surrender 
to England. It was, in fact, easy to raise a debate 

409 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and discussion on all the questions ; and the treaty was 
equally abused and praised in England. But both the 
United States Senate and the British government 
accepted it and time has in the end been the strongest 
advocate for Webster. Most of the questions had been 
in controversy, and dangerous controversy on the eve 
of bloodshed, for half a century without any prospect of 
settlement. No administration, no Secretary of State, 
no Minister to England, had in all those years sufficient 
intellect to do anything more than make the tangle worse 
and bring it nearer to war. Webster settled them in one 
summer's negotiation, and whether settled right or 
wrong, they have remained settled and have never since 
disturbed us. 

Yet to do this, to perform this great service, he had 
to remain in President Tyler's cabinet and alienate him- 
self from a large part of the Whig party. The denunci- 
ation of him for remaining with Tyler, the calumnies 
and tales that were started by the Whig press and by 
Whig leaders are almost beyond belief; and probably 
could not now happen ; we have probably passed beyond 
that phase of our development in self-government. But 
for Webster it was part of the alienation of New Eng- 
land from him, an alienation which went on increasing 
and can still be found with a large part of its original 
vigor in Massachusetts. 

But on the 20th of August, the day the Senate passed 
the treaty, Webster's mind was with his heart, and 
that was far away. He was thinking of the best way 
to harvest the salt hay at Marshfield and of the grand 
sport he might soon have in building a new barn. " I 
am not at all certain," he writes his man on that day, 
" but what you and I shall make a barn the last two 
weeks in September and the first two in October. What 
do you think? Shall we have a better time? " 

The relief came at last in September. " I had a 
glorious month of leisure," he says, "on the seacoast. 
where Seth Peterson and I settled many a knotty point." 
And Lord Ashburton came there and paid him a visit. 

410 



XVI 

RETIRES FROM THE CABINET — LIFE AT MARSHFIELD 

GIRARD WILL — RELIGION — THE PRESIDENCY — INGER- 
SOLL CHARGES — PENSION AND DEBTS 

The Washington Treaty and its dependent problems 
being now disposed of, the Whigs became more insistent 
than ever that Webster should resign from President 
Tyler's cabinet. There was now, they said, no excuse 
whatsoever for his remaining. The Massachusetts 
Whigs held a convention in September of the treaty 
year, 1842, and declared a final separation of the party 
from President Tyler, and at the same time put forward 
the name of Henry Clay as candidate for the Presidency. 
This was very much like reading Webster out of the 
party in his own State ; it was intended, he said, to 
destroy his political standing and character ; and a few 
weeks afterwards he arranged for a great meeting in 
Faneuil Hall where he could speak his mind. 

Public opinion was so strongly against him that his 
friends were uneasy about the result and feared he 
would be assailed with hisses and disrespect. But as 
usual he captured and captivated his audience. He 
came up from Marshfield sunburned, superbly dressed 
and full of the vigor of the sea. He explained his 
position, his relations to the great problems of the 
country in a broad-minded speech of great dignity, ad- 
dressed to a very intellectual, but, at the time, narrow- 
minded audience. He would not promise to resign. 
He would give no pledges, he would make no intima- 
tions one way or the other. He would remain free 
to act as duty called, " I am, gentleman, a little hard 
to coax, but as to being driven, that is out of the 
question." ^ 

'Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 415. 

411 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

He was loudly applauded. His hearers could not 
but admire and sympathize with such a man while he 
was before them. The speech made a great stir in the 
country ; raised a great dust, as he put it ; and won 
for him the approval of conservatives. But the mass 
of the party retained their narrow view as to what he 
should do ; and there is no doubt that Webster received 
a very serious political injury at this time so far as 
concerned any chances he may have had for a future 
nomination for the Presidency. His party in his own 
State had repudiated him and had gone over to Henry 
Clay. He foresaw this and was independent and indif- 
ferent as usual. 

" The Whigs denounce me, of course," he wrote to his son, 
" but I cannot help it. I was determined to do the President 
justice and myself justice; and as for the rest I must be will- 
ing, as I am, to abide consequences. 

" The sober men, men of business, men of independence, 
and of candor, all like it, this way. Mr. Clay's friends and 
the scheming partisans are very angry." (Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvi, p. 384.) 

It was these sober men, these business men, the 
merchants, bankers, capitalists and conservatives, that 
were his real constituency. It was not in his nature 
to go beyond them as Jackson did. To them all his 
great intellectual speeches on banking, finance, tariff 
and the Constitution were addressed. About the only 
time he ever went beyond them was when he aroused 
union sentiment as in the reply to Hayne. Then he 
spoke to the nation. 

Looking back from the broader point of view of the 
country's best interests, his independence, or obstinacy, 
was of great advantage. It was very important that a 
man of his talents and conservatism should be in the 
administrative part of the government. This had been 
proved in the Washington treaty ; and there were other 
important diplomatic and international questions before 
the government, like the Oregon boundary and the first 
mission to China, to mention no others. Webster had 

412 



RETIRES FROM THE CABINET 

the natural pride of a man in wishing to finish his work. 
He was introducing for the handhng of these problems 
new methods which would be of infinite value as prece- 
dents and guides for the future. For many years very 
inferior third rate men had been in the executive offices, 
as was shown by the long years of failure to settle the 
disputes with England. The quality of our executive 
work and accomplishment had not kept pace with the 
methods of other countries. 

And what was the cause of all the trouble? Why 
did the Whigs so detest Tyler? Why did they think 
that Webster's presence in his cabinet for any reason 
was such pollution to Webster that he was no longer 
fit to be a Whig? It was simply and solely the ever- 
lasting old stupidity of establishing a national bank. 
Tyler, two or three years before, had vetoed their two 
bank bills. Nothing but the grave ever cured a good 
old time Whig of the bank stupidity. The highest intel- 
lects of New England, literary characters of Boston, 
thrifty citizens, keen traders, were all afflicted with 
the notion that there could be only one American finan- 
cial method and that must be a national bank. This 
affliction narrowed and warped their minds until they 
could see nothing else. 

Webster himself still held to the delusion, but had 
become more moderate about it. He had long been 
convinced that a national bank of the old type was out 
of the question and could not by any possibility be estab- 
lished. He favored Tyler's Exchequer plan which, while 
not exactly a bank, was a method of issuing currency 
which would be of equal value throughout the Union. 
But the Whigs, though clamoring for a bank, would 
not accept anybody's plan for one, and in that session 
of Congress of 1842-43 would not form one of their 
own. They would not accept the Exchequer plan and 
would not push their own plan, and yet were denouncing 
Webster and Tyler as the enemies of their plan. They 
were demoralized again. 

413 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Webster foretold their speedy downfall ; and he was 
right in not sacrificing his high reputation to their nar- 
row views. He took infinite comfort in the support of his 
old constituency, the consei*vatives of the country. In 
declining an invitation to a public dinner in New York 
signed by a host of the solid men of that town he, 
commented on those signatures as of the highest value 
to him. " They teach me that no considerations should 
be allowed to draw us aside from the course of public 
duty, and that upright intention, impartiality, indepen- 
dent purpose and fidelity to our common country vv^ill 
find their reward." 

In May, 1843, he found that there was no more 
important work for him to do as Secretary of State, and 
that President Tyler, abandoned by the Whigs, was 
very naturally seeking support for his administration 
from the Democrats. Webster had no desire to connect 
himself with the Democratic party and he accordingly 
resigned the office of Secretary of State and retired to 
private life and Marshfield. 

He was again overwhelmed with debt. In 1836, 
when he had tried to resign from public life and devote 
himself to his profession and money-making, he had 
been prevented by friends who persuaded him to with- 
draw his resignation and who helped him to settle his 
difficulties so that he owed no money to anyone. As 
he was not to return to his profession he laid out all 
the money he had or could get in western lands, expect- 
ing, it seems, a great rise in value. But in company 
with many others he was deeply disappointed. 

His expenses were enormous. He was obliged to 
live well in Washington. He kept up two experimental 
and luxurious farms — Marshfield and The Elms — at 
both of v/hich, especially Marshfield, he entertained 
lavishly. His official salary and incidental law practice 
in the Supreme Court went but a small way towards 
meeting this outlay. 



414 



LIFE AT MARSHFIELD 

He had given up his handsome old-fashioned house 
on Summer Street in Boston. " Marshfield and the sea, 
the sea " was his only home. " To hear from Marsh- 
field," he writes in 1845, " is almost the only pleasure 
I expect to enjoy at Washington." Into the house at 
Marshfield he emptied the contents, the furniture, the 
pictures, the curios, and the books of his Boston and 
Washington homes. His library was supposed to be 
worth $40,000, not including his law books, some four 
or five thousand, which were in his office in Boston, 
which he always retained and left in charge of a partner. 
He was an ardent collector of books on natural history 
and had these with his works on agriculture in his ofifice 
in the garden.^ New rooms and wings had been added 
to the Alarshfield house, among them a new and large 
kitchen where Monica could reign supreme. New tracts 
were added to the land, which now amounted to 1800 
acres. With his wife and children, his herds of superb 
cattle, his boatman Peterson, and his favorite farming 
hands gathered round him, and hosts of friends to fill 
the house and overflow into lodgings in the neighbor- 
hood, these last ten years of his life became the greatest 
days at Marshfield. 

He continued to breed fine specimens of oxen, the 
animals he liked best of all. He seemed to glory in 
their magnificent patient strength ; and the power of 
the great beasts taking the large plough through the 
land delighted his imagination. He would sometimes 
yoke them himself and hold the plough with the strength 
and skill of a veteran farmer. It was one of his favorite 
amusements. 

He rose at three or four o'clock in the morning in 
summer, went about feeding and petting his animals, 
attended to his letters and business papers before break- 
fast ; and after this, which for most people would be a 

° Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 429 ; Lanman, Private 
Life of Webster, pp. 75, 87. 

415 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

day's labor, he would devote the remainder of the time 
to entertaining visitors, or excursions on land or water.'* 

Even in winter at Marshfield he rose at four ; and 
we have a letter written by him to Mr. Blatchford on the 
7th of December, 1847, ^t five in the morning, describ- 
ing with boyish enthusiasm the brilliancy of the stars, 
the deep booming of the ocean, and the pleasure he 
expected in an hour from the sunrise. 

In Washington people who called on him at 10 
o'clock in the morning were often surprised to find him 
apparently unoccupied and ready to converse with them ; 
and this, no doubt, added tQ' his deliberate manner, ab- 
sence of nervousness, and never bragging about work, 
started the charge that he was an indolent if not a lazy 
man. The truth was that at 10 o'clock in the morning 
Webster had been working for four or five hours. He 
had finished his correspondence and most pressing busi- 
ness of the day, " had broken the neck of the day's 
work," as Sir Walter Scott, another early riser, used to 
say, and was quite ready to talk on other subjects before 
he went into court or Senate or took up the pursuits of 
the afternoon. As a matter of fact, he was a most 
prodigious worker ; he could not otherwise have accom- 
plished what he did. His investigations and studies 
outside of his legal and public duties were enormous; 
and he probably did more hard work and was more capa- 
ble of undergoing it down into old age than any other 
public, professional or business man of the country.* 

Learning, what for some strange reason every human 
being has to learn for himself by experience, the danger 
to health of long sitting at a desk, he dictated a large 
part of his correspondence and important papers while 
walking up and down the room ; and there is a letter of 
his recommending this method to Henry Clay, whose 
health was sufifering from sedentary pursuits. 

'Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 429; Lanman, Pri- 
vate Life of Webster, pp. 75, 87. 

* Lyman's Memorials, vol. ii, p. 95. 

416 



LIFE AT MARSHFIELD 

" The amount of business," says his private secretary, 
"that he sometimes transacted during a single morning may 
be guessed at when it is mentioned that he not infrequently 
kept two persons employed writing at his dictation at the 
same time ; for as he usually walked the floor on such occa- 
sions, he would give his chief clerk a sentence in one room to 
be incorporated in a diplomatic paper, and, marching to the 
room occupied by his private secretary, give him the skeleton, 
or perhaps the very language, of a private note or letter." 
(Lanman, Private Life of Webster, p. 84.) 

He was all his life an omnivorous reader, reading 
everything-, old and new, and continually buying books 
in a way that reminded every one of what they had 
heard about Napoleon. Lanman speaks of buying for 
him fifty books to take on one of his autumn trips to 
the Elms Farm. He would absorb all that was valuable 
in a book with great rapidity. He usually began by 
reading the index, next the table of contents and chapter 
headings, and then would run rapidly through the text, 
taking in the substance of many of the pages by a rapid 
glance as Macaulay used to do. A book that could 
compel him to go slow was a good one. Probably his 
reading of the index and chapter headings enabled his 
quick mind to forestall a great deal that the author 
would say and he examined the text merely to pick 
out what was different from what he had expected. 

Very few in any generation have the strength to 
endure those early morning mental labors which he 
added to the usual human day's work. His power to 
resist extreme fatigue and react from it by a slight rest 
was imusual. He never seems to have needed more than 
six hours' sleep, and this physical capacity, kept up until 
he was nearly seventy years old, reminds us again in a 
very striking way of his great contemporary Napoleon. 
The two men seem to have been superhuman freaks of 
nature occurring in the same age, one in the Anglo- 
Saxon, the other in the Latin race. 

Sir Walter Scott and Webster were very much alike 
in the largeness of their ability and point of view ; per- 
27 417 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

haps because they were the product of the same con- 
ditions in that age and its pecuHar opportunities in htera- 
ture, new ideas and methods of country hfe. Both were 
handsome and of fine physique as well as capable of 
unusual intellectual labor and a multiplicity of interests 
and enjoyments beyond most of mankind. Both were 
devoted to nature and country life, sport and animals, 
antiquities and literature. They had the same insatiable 
craving for owning vast acreage of land; and in all 
these pursuits they had the same facility for squander- 
ing money and getting into debt. 

It seems to have required no great resolution or 
effort for Webster to work so early in the morning. 
He loved it. He had an uncontrollable passion for 
watching the stars disappear out of the sky ; and perhaps 
the most beautiful passage in all his writings is his often 
quoted letter to Mrs. Page about the morning. Those 
early hours were intoxication to him. His powerful 
imagination revelled in them. He drew together all 
the beautiful things that had ever been written about 
the morning, from King David, from Milton, from 
Shakespeare, he knew them all, he could repeat them all 
at any moment, and he applied them after his practical 
manner as he handed the ears of corn to his mighty j 
oxen and roamed through the dew-laden grass. He was 
living the ideals he had found in literature. 

" It is morning — and a morning sweet, and fresh, and de- 
lightful. Everybody knows the morning, in its metaphorical 
sense, applied to so many objects and on so many occasions. 
The health, strength, and beauty of early years lead us to call 
that period the ' morning of life.' Of a lovely young woman 
we say, she is ' bright as the morning,' and no one doubts why 
Lucifer is called ' son of the morning.' But the morning itself, 
few people, inhabitants of cities, know anything about. Among 
all our good people of Boston, not one in a thousand sees the 
sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the morning. 
Their idea of it is, that it is that part of the day which comes 
along after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak, or a piece of 
toast. With them, morning is not a new issuing of light; a 
new bursting forth of the sun, a new waking-up of all that 

418 



LIFE AT MARSHFIELD 

has life, from a sort of temporary death, to behold again the 
works of God, the heavens and the earth; it is only a part of 
the domestic day, belonging to breakfast, the reading the news- 
papers, answering notes, sending the children to school, and 
giving orders for dinner. The first faint streak of light, the 
earliest purpling of the east, which the lark springs up to greet, 
and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and red, till 
at length the ' glorious sun is seen, regent of day ' — this they 
never enjoy, for this they never see. 

"Beautiful descriptions of the 'morning' abound in all 
languages, but they are the strongest, perhaps, in those of the 
East, where the sun is so often an object of worship. King 
David speaks of taking to himself the ' wings of the morning.' 
This is highly poetical and beautiful. The ' wings of the morn- 
ing' are the beams of the rising sun. Rays of light are wings. 
It is thus said that the Sun of Righteousness shall arise, ' with 
healing in His wings ; ' a rising sun which shall scatter light, 
and health, and joy, throughout the universe. Milton has fine 
descriptions of morning, but not so many as Shakespeare, from 
whose writings pages of the most beautiful imagery, all founded 
on the glory of the morning, might be filled. 

" I never thought that Adam had much advantage of us 
from having seen the world while it was new. The manifesta- 
tions of the power of God, like His mercies, are ' new every 
morning,' and ' fresh every evening.' We see as fine risings 
of the sun as ever Adam saw. and its risings are as much 
a miracle now as they were in his day, and I think a good deal 
more, because it is now a part of the miracle that for thousands 
and thousands of years he has come to his appointed time, 
without the variation of a millionth part of a second. Adam 
could not tell how this might be. 

" I know the morning ; I am acquainted with it, and I 
love it, fresh and sweet as it is, a daily new creation, breaking 
forth, and calling all that have life, and breath, and being, to 
nevif adoration, new enjoyments, and new gratitude." (Private 
Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 240.) 

Then there were those days when he indulged an- 
other ideal. He and Peterson, not exactly as employer 
and employed, but more as shipmates, would take the 
sail boat in the early hours and the rising sun would 
meet them far out at sea, where they would spend the 
whole day fishing, dreaming and pondering on the vast 
prospect of the ocean, to return long after sunset deep- 
laden with their spoil. 

419 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

He had a long holiday and outing that summer of 
1843 after retiring from the office of Secretary of State. 
But he had to interrupt it early in June to prepare 
a second Bunker Hill address to celebrate the comple- 
tion of the monument, the beginning of which he had 
celebrated with his famous oration seventeen years be- 
fore. The second one was less eloquent and striking. 
It touched on union sentiment ; and for the rest dis- 
cussed the effect of the Revolution and the benefits of 
Anglo-Saxon rule in America. Senator Hoar was pres- 
ent as a boy among the Harvard students. Emerson, 
the philosopher, was also there, studied the orator in 
transcendental fashion and reported to the world : 

" His countenance, his figure, his manners were all in so 
grand a style that he was without effort as superior to his emi- 
nent rivals as they were to the humblest. He alone of all 
men did not disappoint the eye and the ear, but was a fit figure 
in the landscape. He knew well that a little more or less 
of rhetoric signified nothing ; he was only to say plain and 
equal things — grand things if he had them ; and if he had them 
not, only to abstain from saying unfit things — and the whole 
occasion was answered by his presence." (Hoar, "Autobi- 
ography of Seventy Years," vol. i, pp. 135, 136.) 

Webster now returned to practising law in winter, 
more particularly in the Supreme Court at Washington, 
and soon was making, he tells us, about fifteen thousand 
a year.^ But this was a trifle for his expensive life, 
which required apparently more like thirty or forty 
thousand; and if he had had that much he would, no 
doubt, have spent it all and involved himself for as much 
more. 

He was sixty-two years old, a grim and war-worn 
veteran in the contests of politics and the bar. But he 
was still the same genial Webster who used to write 
verses and humorous letters for his classmates and the 
girls in New Hampshire. 

^ Curtis, vol. ii, p. 239. 

420 



GIRARD WILL 

Monday Morning, March 4, 1844. 
My Dear Josephine: 

I fear you got a wetting last evening, as it rained fast 
soon after you left our door; and I avail myself of the return 
of your bonnet to express tlie wish that you are well this 
morning, and without cold. 

I have demanded parlance with your bonnet ; have asked it 
how many tender looks it has noticed to be directed under it ; 
what soft words it has heard, close to its side ; in what in- 
stances an air of triumph has caused it to be tossed ; and 
whether, ever, and when, it has quivered from trembling emo- 
tions proceeding from below. But it has proved itself a faith- 
ful keeper of secrets, and would answer none of my questions. 
It only remained for me to attempt to surprise it into confes- 
sion by pronouncing sundry names one after another. It seemed 
quite unmoved by most of these, but at the apparently unex- 
pected mention of one, I thought its ribbands decidedly flut- 
tered ! I gave it my parting good wishes, hoping that it might 
never cover an aching head, and that the eyes which it pro- 
tects from the rays of the sun may know no tears but of joy 
and aflfection. (Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 425.) 

It was at this time in the year 1844 that he argued 
the Girard will case, a famous controversy in its day. 
Girard had made what for that time was an enormous 
fortune in the ship-owning and com.mercial interests of 
Philadelphia. He was our first conspicuously rich man, 
the first American millionaire. A part of his fortune 
he left to establish an orphan college still existing in 
Philadelphia. He provided that while the pupils should 
be taught the " purest principles of morality," no relig- 
ion of any form should be taught within its walls, " no 
ecclesiastic, missionary or minister of any sect what- 
ever " should have any station or duty in the college 
or even be admitted within the premises as a visitor. 
Webster was retained to argue the case in the Supreme 
Court at Washington and show that the gift was not a 
legal charity because derogatory to the Christian relig- 
ion, an attack upon " all the laws of God and all the 
usages of Christian man," " mere sheer, low, ribald, 
vulgar deism and infidelity," for the ruin and degrada- 
tion of unfortunate orphans. He spoke for three days 

421 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

on law, religion and the history of Christianity, and a 
large part of what he said was published, widely circu- 
lated, and read with great satisfaction by religious 
people all over the country. But the court upheld the 
will, the orphan college was established in the manner 
provided by its founder, and is still a flourishing insti- 
tution. 

Crowds of people came to the court each day to hear 
him speak and could hardly be restrained from applaud- 
ing the impassioned passages in defence of Christianity. 
Judge Story, who wrote the opinion of the court, was 
unconvinced by the speech, and afterwards said in a 
letter that Webster had done all he could for his side, 
but that it was " altogether an address to the prejudices 
of the clergy." '^ 

It may be said here that Webster had, of course, 
been brought up in the orthodox belief, as it was called, 
or Congregationalism of New England, the old Puritan 
faith. Ele seems to have gone to churches of that sort 
near Marshfield at times ; but Lanman, his secretary, 
says that he was an Episcopalian and preferred that 
form, though he was liberal in listening to other preach- 
ing. Parton, a Unitarian and Abolitionist, says sneer- 
ingly that he became an Episcopalian because it was a 
genteel faith, and assures us 

"He had no religion. . . . What he called his religion 
had no effect whatever upon the conduct of his life ; it made him 
go to church, talk piously, puff the clergy and patronize Provi- 
dence — no more." (Famous Americans, p. 112.) 

This means that a man who was generally believed 
to have overindulged in drinking and eating and soine 
other good things of life, and differed from Mr. Parton 
in politics, had better have had not quite so much to say 
about religion. Mr. Parton, however, should have re- 
membered that religion and the churches are for the 
sinners as much as for the righteous. 

* Life of Story by his Son, vol. ii, p. 469. 

422 



RELIGION 

Theodore Parker seems to come closer to Webster's 
religion when he says that he went to the Episcopal 
Church in Washington, the Unitarian in Boston, and to 
churches generally without regard to the theology of the 
minister. How could he have been Webster and have 
done otherwise? To conceive of him confined to any 
one division of Christianity is impossible. He probably 
liked the Episcopal Church because of the richness, 
beauty and good taste of its Book of Common Prayer ; 
and here and there in his speeches he uses phrases from 
it wuth evident relish of their forceful meaning. 

Religion was to him poetry. It appealed to his 
powerful emotions. He loved it for its scholarship, its 
learning, its history. He loved it as he loved geology 
and astronomy. He loved its grandeur and sublimity, 
its lofty morality and unselfishness, the primitive 
Homeric poetry of the Old Testament and the Sermon 
on the Mount, of which he said in his last days it 
" cannot be a merely human production." That is to 
say, he loved all that side of it, and for the superstition, 
the cunning, the priest-craft, the ritual and the dogma 
he cared not one straw, although he would show most 
kindly consideration for anyone who was addicted to 
that phase. 

One of his greatest pleasures was to read the Old 
Testament aloud to his friends at Marshfield as his 
father had read it to him as a boy. But he had gone 
far beyond his father and studied all that had been 
written on the origin and history of the ancient writ- 
ings. He had even studied the geology of Palestine and 
the changes supposed to have taken place in the region 
of the Euphrates. He had read about Confucius and 
the Indian and early Persian lawgivers and sages, and 
compared their writings with the writings of the He- 
brews. No one, it used to be said, could listen to his 
readings and comments without believing in the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures or in his. 

His views were, however, largely rationalistic He 

423 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

wanted to write a book on Christianity, to leave a dec- 
laration of his belief in it. He would avoid, he said, 
doctrinal distinctions about the Saviour, " but I wish 
to express my belief in His divine mission." He looked 
upon the Old Testament as a most interesting develop- 
ment of ancient law ; but principally as a collection of 
poems of vast antiquity, handed down by tradition and 
of a primitiveness and beauty far excelling Homer. 
He was quite indignant with anyone who could not see 
this. " I have met with men in my time," he said, 
" accounted learned scholars — who knew Homer by 
heart, recited Pindar, were at home with ^schylus, and 
petted Horace — who could not understand Isaiah, Moses 
or the Royal Poet ... so far superior in original 
force, sublimity, and truth to nature." '' It was to bring 
out this wonderful poetry, the tenderness and intellect 
of David, the sublimity of Isaiah, the dignity and im- 
agery of Job, that most of his readings and comments 
were directed. He would explain at length the weak- 
ness of the Iliad compared with the powerful imagery, 
the superb passion and the sublime thought of those 
ancient children of the desert that had found in him a 
kindred imagination. 

He, of course, failed to attain the Whig nomination 
for the Presidency in 1844. His biographers have be- 
wailed this loss both to himself and the country, and 
have condemned the narrowness and shortsightedness 
of the Whigs. But when we reflect that Webster's 
persistence in remaining so long in Tyler's cabinet had 
brought on the discussion whether he was a Whig at all, 
we need not be surprised at the result. With fully 
half his party declaring that he was not a Whig, or 
that he was a renegade Whig, how was it possible for 
him to attain the nomination? 

When Tyler became President, Webster had before 
him in the Department of State half a dozen momen- 
tous questions, questions that had been accumulating 

^ Works, National EdiMon, vol. xiii, pp. 571, 592. 

424 




Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Company 

WEBSTER IN 1 845. AGE 63 



THE PRESIDENCY 

for half a century. He was conscious of the abihty 
and experience to deal with them, to succeed where all 
others had failed, to perform a great public service, and 
reap a corresponding immortal reputation. He was 
unquestionably right in accepting this opportunity, and 
allowing half his party to howl about the renegade while 
the other half wrote him letters of admiration, congratu- 
lation and support, letters which his literary executor, 
finding among his papers, wonders why they did not give 
him the Presidency or at least the nomination. 

But when we choose between two courses in this 
world, we usually can enjoy the benefits of only one 
of them. The Presidency is not usually given as a 
reward, least of all as a reward for unusual independence 
of thought or action. It has generally been regarded 
as standing by itself, governed by considerations pecu- 
liarly its own ; and a man with a long career of political 
experiences and innumerable and varied opinions on all 
sorts of subjects is usually too vulnerable to be avail- 
able. Henry Clay, who received the Whig nomination 
on this occasion, though less independent than Webster, 
was rather too much of the sort of man just described 
to be a successful candidate. Webster took the stump 
for him and made a number of speeches during the 
summer and autumn; but Clay was easily defeated by 
the Democratic candidate Polk. 

Webster's leave of absence from public life lasted 
only about two years. He returned again to Congress 
in March, 1845, as Senator from Massachusetts, just 
after the annexation of Texas had been accomplished 
by northern as well as by southern votes and greater 
territory and larger representation in Congress given to 
the slave-holders. 

The most important subject which first occupied his 
attention in the Senate was the Oregon boundary, our 
northwest boundary on the British possessions, which 
had not been settled by the Treaty of Washington. 
There was a strong and even violent feeling in the 

42s 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

country, shared principally by the Democratic party, 
that the boundary should be the line of latitude 54° 40', 
which would have taken our domain some three hun- 
dred miles farther north, and cut off British America 
from the port of Vancouver and all access to the waters 
of Puget Sound on the Pacific Ocean. " Fifty-four 
forty or Fight," became the party cry of the Democrats, 
while Webster inclined to a milder course, deprecated 
war and advocated the line 49° north latitude, which is 
now the boundary. 

In Faneuil Hall he made a strong speech in favor of 
peace with England which was translated in several 
languages in Europe. But in Congress, both in the 
Senate and the House, he was assailed by the Democrats 
and his whole conduct in the Washington Treaty and 
the McLeod affair reviewed. He was charged with 
dishonorably surrendering to England a large part of 
the State of Maine, of violating the rights of the sov- 
ereign State of New York by interfering in the defence 
of McLeod, and of writing to the Governor of New 
York that if McLeod were not released the town of 
New York would be laid in ashes. There were other 
charges which originated with an employee in the State 
Department who intimated to some of the Democrats 
that he could show them evidence against Webster in 
the files of the department. It was a time of great 
political excitement, the Democrats were expecting to 
make capital out of the feeling against England and 
it would be a great thing to get rid of Webster, who 
was hitting them hard by showing that they were trying 
to force President Polk into a rupture with England. 
Mr. C. J. Ingersoll, a member of Congress from Phila- 
delphia, examined the files of the department and framed 
several charges accusing Webster of unlawful use while 
Secretary of State of the Secret Service fund, of a 
default of over two thousand dollars in that fund, and 
also of using the fund to corrupt the party press, 

Webster's success in settling the northeast boundary, 

426 



INGERSOLL CHARGES 

which for forty years had defied the skill of all other 
statesmen, was to be explained, Mr. IngersoU said, by 
his use of the Secret Service money to corrupt the 
press of Maine and bring it to a willingness to compro- 
mise, a feat which former administrations had been 
unwilling to accomplish by corruption. 

It was true that popular feeling in Maine was so 
touchy on the boundary question, the people were so 
ready for war, that the journals of neither of the two 
parties in the State had dared handle the subject. In- 
vestigation showed that Webster had employed a person 
to write articles for the religious press of the State 
and in that way brought the people into- a more amicable 
mood towards his plan of compromise, and the writer 
of these articles was paid out of the Secret Service 
fund. 

There was considerable excitement over Mr. Inger- 
soll's charges in Congress and two committees were 
appointed to investigate them by witnesses and docu- 
ments.* The committees were composed of the party 
hostile to Webster and one of the members was Jeffer- 
son Davis, afterwards Secretary of War and later Presi- 
dent of the Southern Confederacy. But although com- 
posed of his political opponents, the committees reported 
in favor of Webster and entirely exonerated him with 
only one dissenting voice. The evidence showed no 
more than his usual want of method in dealing with 
money matters. There had been a sum expended for 
which he had no vouchers ; but he had paid it out of 
his own pocket until he could find the vouchers.'' 

There was one of the charges, however, not appa- 
rently passed upon by either of the committees, which 
was true and not denied by either Webster or his 
friends, and that was that he was pensioned by a num- 
ber of prominent gentlemen in Massachusetts. About 

* Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 448-452. 

* Curtis, vol. ii, pp. 286, 287 ; Works, National Edition, vol. 
xvi, pp. 445, 446. 

427 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

forty of his admirers who had been supporting him in 
poHtics for some twenty-five years, knowing well the 
story of his debts and that he was incapable of accumu- 
lating or even saving money, raised among themselves 
a fund of $37,000, which they put in trust for him, the 
income to be paid semi-annually, and when not called 
for to be added to the principal. The list of these 
persons included a large proportion of the most prom- 
inent and respected citizens of Boston ; such names 
as Sears, Appleton, Shaw, Lawrence, Thayer, Curtis, 
Grey, Lowell, Amor\^ Dexter, Quincy, Lyman, Shad- 
dock, Loring, Cabot, Gardner and Prescott. It was a 
list of eminence, conservatism and intelligence of which 
any man would be proud to have the support, i' 

Webster accepted this gift and also other gifts of 
money from rich admirers and friends, to the great 
injury of his reputation. Some of those who con- 
tributed were interested in the industries sustained 
by the protective tariff ; though by no means all. But, 
of course, the charge has been made that Webster's 
advocacy of the tariff was bought by these gentlemen 
and that he was nothing more than their agent and 
attorney in Congress. 

Theodore Parker in the full heat of Abolitionism 
charged him with collecting money which he did not 
pay over; but Parker was not a lawyer, was always 
violent, and seldom realized the full meaning of his own 
language. He may not have realized that he w-as charg- 
ing Webster with embezzling his client's money. But 
as Parker was a public man of the day and as the pur- 
pose of this book is to give the reader the evidence, we 
must quote some more of his onslaught. 

" In 1827 he solicited the Senatorship of Massachusetts ; 
it would put down the calumnies of Isaac Hill ! He obtained 
the ofifice, not without management. Then he refused to take 
his seat until ten thousand dollars was raised for him. The 
money came clandestinely, and he went into the Senate — a pen- 
sioner! His reputation demanded a speech against the tariflf 

428 



PENSION AND DEBTS 

of '28; his pension required his vote for the 'bill of abomina- 
tions.' He spoke one way, and voted the opposite. Was that 
the first donation? He was forestalled before he left New 
Hampshire. The next gift was twenty thousand, it is said. 
Then the sums increased." (Sermon on Death of Webster, 
p. 96.) 

The next to the last statement of the above admits 
that it is based on hearsay. The first part of it says 
he was so weak that he had to soHcit the Senatorship 
in 1827, and yet so strong- that he could demanil 
$10,000 for accepting it, which is somewhat contradic- 
tory. The statement about the tariff of 1828 is ob- 
viously unfair. 

Setting aside these unproven charges and confining 
ourselves to the pension of $37,000 given by the Boston 
gentlemen, Webster, of course, should not have accepted 
such gifts of money. He ought not to have been in 
a position which tempted him to accept them. His 
acceptance, even for the best reasons, at once laid him 
open to the inference which every enemy or opponent 
very naturally drew. Yet there is no evidence that the 
Boston gentlemen in question had any intention of 
bribing or influencing his opinions ; and it does not 
appear that he worked in their individual interests or 
changed any of his opinions. 

For many years, for a quarter of a century and 
more. Webster had been not only the admiration but 
the hope and reliance of the moneyed and conservative 
classes, the merchants, manufacturers, capitalists and 
bankers. Men of this sort had for a generation been 
living in continual dread of the crude schemes, wild- 
cat banks, pet banks and other Jacksonian and Demo- 
cratic or popular methods of finance which had brought 
upon the country a succession of disastrous panics. 
They regarded Webster as their own peculiar repre- 
sentative and protector. In seasons of danger, said the 
Philadelphia merchants, " he has been to us a living 
comforter, and more than once has restored this nation 

429 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to security and prosperity." ^« This was the feeling of 
all the great business centres. These people regarded 
Webster's views as sound ; they wished him to stay in 
politics forever ; when he attempted to retire and devote 
himself exclusively to his profession in 1836, they forced 
him back into public life and they straightened out his 
tangled private affairs. This was done by wealthy and 
important persons in New York as well as in Massa- 
chusetts. 

From all these circumstances and from the long- 
continued, oft-repeated and spontaneous support of those 
prominent persons, Webster got into the habit of rely- 
ing on them. They insisted on his staying in politics, 
their admiration, their faith in him, their belief in the 
good work he was doing were obviously sincere, and, 
as they kept him in politics, on the small salaries of 
those times, and prevented him from earning a large 
fortune at the bar, — well, he allowed them to help him. 
That was the sum and substance of it. In the letter 
announcing to him the small trust fund deposited for 
his benefit in Boston, they say : 

" Government grants nothing beyond the salary of office 
for services rendered, and a consequence is that our ablest 
statesmen, on their retirement from the highest positions, are 
frequently obliged to return to the labors of their early life; 
and our venerable judges, even of the Supreme Court of the 
nation, after years of toil, are left in their old age poor 
and unprovided - for. Your friends in Boston, desirous, in 
your particular case, to ward off these evils and furnish you 
with a supply for your future wants, have determined to show, 
on their part at least, a decided preference for a permanent 
provision, and to offer you, in this way, a prop to sustain you 
hereafter." (Curtis, vol. ii. p. 286.) 

His secretary, Lanman, said that " he knew not the 
value of money." But that was hardly an explanation. 
He knew the value of money as well as anybody ; better 
than most people ; but he never could bring himself to 
attend to its details : he despised all those details unless 

" Curtis, vol. ii, p. 29Q. 

430 



PENSION AND DEBTS 

they came into great questions of governmental finance. 
He could deal with his own finances only as troublesome 
generalities to be shoved aside, left to the care of others, 
or left to take care of themselves. Those details, which 
to some men are a delight, were to him a nuisance that 
interfered with his studies of great problems of law 
and politics, his oratory, his farms, his love of litera- 
ture, and his sports. He liked to regard money mat- 
ters as mere incidentals, vulgarities not to be mentioned, 
and nothing like so important as Monica's roasting of a 
fine saddle of mutton. 

" He made money with ease," says his secretary, " and 
spent it without reflection. He had accounts with various banks 
and men of all parties were always glad to accommodate him 
with loans, if he wanted them. He kept no record of his de- 
posits, unless it were on slips of paper hidden in his pockets; 
these matters were generally left with his secretary. His notes 
were seldom or never regularly protested, and when they were 
they caused him an immense deal of mental anxiety. When 
the writer has sometimes drawn a check for a couple of thou- 
sand dollars, he has not even looked at it. but packed it away 
in his pockets, like so much waste-paper. During his long pro- 
fessional career, he earned money enough to make a dozen 
fortunes, but he spent it liberally, and gave it away to the poor 
by hundreds and thousands. Begging letters from women and 
unfortunate men were received by him almost daily, at cer- 
tain periods, and one instance is remembered where on six suc- 
cessive days he sent remittances of fifty and one hundred dol- 
lars to people with whom he was entirely unacquainted. He 
was indeed careless, but strictly and religiously honest in all 
his money matters. He knew not how to be otherwise." (Lan- 
man, Private Life of Webster, p. 90.) 

Some of his lavishness. like buying the freedom 
of slaves, was real generosity. Other instances were 
mere carelessness. Two of the stock stories seem very 
characteristic of his point of view. A merchant had 
long pressed him for payment of a bill. At last Web- 
ster stepped hurriedly into the man's office one day, 
emptied out a couple of handfuls of coins and notes 
on the desk, pushed them towards him without counting, 
asked him to place them to his credit, and as hurriedly 

431 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

departed. Then there is the old and rather doubtful 
one of the boy who came to his office for payment of a 
bill and found him solemnly reading Blackstone. " I 
have no money, my boy," he said, abstractedly looking 
up with the great black eyes that almost frightened the 
boy out of his wits. Then he paused, fumbled among 
the leaves of the book, found a hundred-dollar bank 
note there, handed it to the boy without inquiring the 
amount of the bill, and went on with his reading. 

Yet in all other things, from the smallest points in 
the mechanism of his guns and fishing rods up to the 
most delicate shades of meaning in words, this man 
was the most cautious master of exactitude and details. 
But money was dross to him. He liked its results ; he 
had had more or less of it in his lifetime ; but he hated 
to be bound by it. One sees this trait in some of his 
early letters when he was just out of college, and he 
and his brother and father were continually poor and 
continually borrowing money. He never complained of 
his straitened circumstances. He made fun of them., i 
He speaks of having only " a few rascally counters in 
my pocket," that the " rascal dollars " are a necessity 
after all, calls them " dear delightfuls," and says, " How 
pleasant it would be to retire with a decent clever bag of 
Rixes to a pleasant country town and follow one's own 
inclination." 

The boy is father to the man. He never changed 
much in that respect. To have " a decent, clever bag of 
Rixes " somehow or other, and retire where he could 
spend them lavishly on friends, fine cattle, farming and 
sport, meanwhile pursuing his tastes for literature, 
geology and astronomy, with a touch of political and 
rhetorical eminence, and when the bag of Rixes gave 
out have another one come along, he hardly knew ex- 
actly how — that was his ideal. 

One cannot help remembering the remark of Judge 
Smith when Webster, as a youth in 1812, declared he 
would risk his prospects at the bar for the sake of a seat 
in Congress. 

432 



PENSION AND DEBTS 

" The impudent young dog that he is ; he does not know 
i the value of money and never will. No matter, he was born for 
I something better than hoarding money bags." (Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvii, p. 547.) 

He knew his fault. " I almost wish sometimes," he 
wrote at the close of his life, " that I had been born 
a miser. A great portion of all the ills which I have 
felt in life, except family misfortunes, have arisen from 
too great a carelessness about saving and investing my 
hard earnings." " One day in 1849, when nearly seventy 
years old, sitting in court and tired of listening to the 
dry arguments of his colleagues and opponents, he began 
to write a defence of himself in a letter to General 
Lyman : 

" It will be said, or may be said hereafter, Mr. Webster 
was a laborious man in his profession and other pursuits ; 
he never tasted of the bread of idleness ; his profession yielded 
him at some times large amounts of income ; but he seems 
never to have aimed at accumulation, and perhaps was not 
justly sensible of the importance and duty of preservation. 
Riches were never before his eyes as a leading object of regard. 
When young and poor, he was more earnest in struggling for 
eminence than in eflforts for making money; and in after-life 
reputation, public regard, and usefulness in high pursuits 
t| mainly engrossed his attention. He always said also, that he 
was never destined to be rich ; that no such star presided over 
his birth ; that he never obtained anything by any attempts or 
efTorts out of the line of his profession ; that his friends on 
several occasions induced him to take an interest in business 
operations ; that as often as he did so loss resulted, till he used 
to say, when spoken to on such subjects, ' Gentlemen, if you 
have any projects for money-making, I pray you keep me out 
of them ; my singular destiny mars everything of that sort, 
and would be sure to overwhelm your own better fortunes.' " 
(Lyman, Memorials of Webster, vol. ii, p. 152.) 

The situation, after all excuses, was certainly not 
creditable to Webster. But independently of the in- 
ferences which may be drawn from, the bald facts, the 
people in Boston, New York and Washington, who at 
various times furnished him with money, do not appear 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 636. 
28 433 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to have regarded themselves as bribing him or hiring 
him to advocate particular principles. It was done 
openly and was well known. They seem to have re- 
garded themselves as saving from financial embarrass- 
ment a valuable public man whose opinions had always 
been the same as their own. 

The charge has several times been made that it was 
very outrageous of him to have fine cattle, experimental 
farms and other extravagant pleasures when he owed 
money to people and when the money subscribed and 
given to him was used by him in these pleasures. He 
no doubt laid himself open to this attack; but it is per- 
haps a little narrow. The gentlemen who subscribed 
the money knew all about him; they gave the money 
with their eyes open, knew his habits, knew perfectly 
well how he spent money ; and presumably, as men of 
wealth and his admirers, were glad to have him spend 
it on whatever was his way of life. They would not 
have cared to see him stint himself or lead a meagre, 
mean existence. In fact, they gave him the money to 
enable him to live like the regal natured sort of man he 
was. It was that nature in him that won their admira- 
tion ; and it must be remembered that the money was 
given voluntarily and of their own accord. 

It was a characteristic of the times. People do not 
now go into such ecstasies of admiration over a public 
man as they did in those days over Webster and Clay. 
There are a number of stories of people shedding tears 
over Clay's defeats, of women going in crowds to kiss 
him, bursting into tears when they met him, on the road ; 
and it will be remembered that when Clay was ruined 
financially by an unlucky speculation and was about to 
sell his beloved country place, Ashland, his friends 
relieved him of all his debts by secretly going to the 
bank and paying the notes he had signed. When he 
inquired in astonishment by whom this had been done, 
he was told " not by your enemies, Mr. Gay " ; and 
that was all the answer he could ever obtain. 

434 



PENSION AND DEBTS 

Burke's debts were paid by his friends, and Charles 
Fox, described in EngHsh books as of such immaculate 
politics and immaculate oratory, was given an annuity 
by his admirers. Fox's debts were not incurred like 
Webster's by over-generosity, lavish entertainment of 
his friends, excessive charity and love of animals, farm- 
ing and nature. They were incurred in gambling of 
such an extravagant kind as almost to warrant the inter- 
ference of the police ; but they are treated by his biogra- 
phers as a mere amiable eccentricity. 

A few years ago there Avas a short controversy in 
the Forum Maga::ine between Senator Hoar and Mr. 
Charles R. Miller, editor of the New York Times. 
The Senator maintained that there was no deterioration 
in the Senate of his day as compared with the Senate 
of the time of Webster, Clay and Calhoun. Mr. Miller 
maintained that there was considerable difference ; that 
in Webster's time strong men went into public life from 
inward call and love of the highest distinction, often to 
the sacrifice or injury of their wealth or fortune. Dis- 
tinction was the reward. But now high intellect is 
regarded as better rewarded in serving as officials or 
lawyers in the interests of great corporations or syndi- 
cates of capital. Webster, if he were alive to-day, said 
Mr. Miller, in closing, would be neither in the Senate 
nor in debt.^- 

^ Forum Magazine, vol. xxii, p. 281. 



435 



XVII 

THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

The events which led to the Mexican War and fol- 
lowed it wrought a profound change in Webster's posi- 
tion, a change which alienated from him many of his 
constituents in New England, and which, when added 
to his unpopularity for remaining in the " renegade 
Tyler's cabinet," may be said to have seriously marred 
his reputation in his own party, more particularly among 
the Abolitionists, Free Soilers, and anti-Slavery Whigs, 
and to some extent among their successors, the Re- 
publicans. 

He had been opposed to Henry Clay's compromise | 
with the South in 1833. He believed that it was un- 
necessary ; that the southern defection was not well 
organized, that the North was strong enough to pre- 1 
vent one State like South Carolina from breaking up 
the Union for the sake of slavery. At the time of South 
Carolina's nullification proceedings in 1833, Webster, 
instead of compromising, would have let events take 
their course and would have supported President Jack- 
son in making an example of South Carolina in her 
attempt at nullification, secession and rebellion. But 
the Mexican War wroLight such a vast change in the 
balance of power between the North and the South, it 
so increased the slave power, and so encouraged the 
organization of secession, and so increased the numbers 
of the Abolitionists who also believed in secession that 
Webster went over entirely to Clay's idea of compromise 
as the only way, for the time being, of preventing the 
break-up of the Union. 1 

The origin of the change in the situation was Texas, 
which, a.s we know, won its independence from Mexico 
in 1836. Immediately the question of its annexation 

436 




HAT PUK'iKAiT OF WEBSTER 
(From a Daguerreotype) 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

to the United States arose. It was next door to us ; its 
people were largely in favor of annexation ; and our 
Democratic party, especially the southern Democrats, 
were eager. tO' annex it, in order to extend the area of 
slavery and obtain a larger representation in Congress 
for the slave-holding interest ; in short, to throw the 
balance of power decidedly in favor of the South. In- 
deed the Whigs, except Webster and a very few others, 
were not seriously opposed to annexation, certainly not 
as much opposed to it as they should have been. 

It had long been the practice of Congress to keep 
the balance of power nearly even. If a free State were 
admitted, a slave State was soon admitted to balance it. 
There were at this time fourteen slave and thirteen 
free States. But territory for slave States was ex- 
hausted, while there was almost boundless territory in 
the North and the Northwest from which free States 
could be made. The South saw in this the prospect of 
increasing weakness for the slave interest. The vast 
region of Texas would furnish four or five slave States. 
Mexico had set free her slaves. Texas retained 
slavery and southerners migrated into it with their 
slaves. The soil of a large part of Texas would pro- 
duce cotton ; and annexation seemed necessary in order 
to preserve slavery both in Texas and in the United 
States. And slavery was indeed in danger ; for besides 
Mexico, England and France had recently set free the 
slaves in their colonies. 

President Tyler, after Webster left his cabinet, 
secretly negotiated a treaty of annexation which was 
submitted to the Senate, but rejected because the boun- 
daries given to Texas would encroach on Mexico and 
be a cause of war. In the Whig convention of May, 
1844, Henry Clay was nominated, again defeated, and 
the Democratic candidate, Mr. Polk, became President. 

But before Polk was inaugurated Tyler's adminis- 
tration succeeded in annexing Texas. Calhoun had be- 
come Secretary of State and became very much alarmed 

437 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

for southern interests because there were movements on 
foot in Texas to aboHsh slavery. If these succeeded 
the southern slave-holders would have a source of abo- 
litionist propaganda on the south of them as well as 
on the north. They would be almost surrounded by 
abolitionism with its moral arguments, its pamphlets 
and tracts, and its enticements to their valuable, or sup- 
posedly valuable, human property. Calhoun, therefore, 
bestirred himself to carry out a new plan of annexation ; 
and, instead of the plan of a formal treaty which had 
recently failed, he secured the consent of the govern- 
ment of Texas to have annexation accomplished by mere 
resolutions in Congress. These resolutions were passed 
by both House and Senate on the ist of March, 1845, 
three days before Mr. Polk was inaugurated and three 
days before Webster took his seat in the Senate. 

From the moment he heard the first intimations of 
the schemes for annexing Texas, Webster seems to have 
been deeply agitated ; more so than some of his friends 
thought necessary. It would increase the slave power, 
he said ; it would endanger the Union. He wrote 
articles against it in the newspapers ; he had a resolution 
against it introduced in Congress ; he tried to have 
public meetings called against it; but all to no effect. 
The Whigs said that he was an alarmist ; that he was 
jealous of Clay and wanted to injure him; and as a 
matter of fact, the annexation proceedings were put 
through Congress largely by northern votes, the votes 
of men who afterwards became Free Soilers and Abo- 
litionists and denounced Webster for not having stopped 
annexation. He should have tried harder, they said, 
to stop it. He should have made a greater efifort. He 
should have given one blast upon his bugle-horn which 
would have been " worth a thousand men." He might 
have attained the Presidency on such an issue ; and so 
on with similar nonsense ; for when men become fanatics 
one of the first things they lose is their sense of humor. \ 

One of the consequences, however, followed very 

438 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

quickly. President Polk, in taking possession of Texas, 
advanced the United States troops into the territory, 
the title to which was in dispute between Texas and 
Mexico, and this immediately brought on war. The 
southern Democrats — and their President, Mr. Polk, 
was from Tennessee — were rather eager for war, which, 
it was believed, would bring the conquest of vast terri- 
tory in the Southwest for the extension of slavery. 

The Constitution allows war to be declared only 
by Congress, differing from the old govermiients of 
Europe, which gave this authority to the Crown ; and the 
conduct of Polk was the first instance which showed 
how easily this provision of the Constitution could be 
evaded. By moving some troops only a few miles he 
had involved the country in a war which Congress 
must in honor accept. Congress merely passed an act 
raising troops for the war, and the preamble to the 
act recited that a state of war exists " between the 
United States and Mexico." 

Into the details of the Alexican War we need not 
enter, except to say that Webster's son Edward served 
in it and died at its close of a fever, a sad loss to the 
father, whose other son, Fletcher, was to meet a similar 
fate in the Civil War. 

That Mexico would be conquered was a foregone 
conclusion ; and the most serious question in the minds 
of conservative Whigs, and also in Webster's mind, was 
how much of the ancient territory of the Aztecs, and 
the Spaniards, was to be obtained for the extension of 
slavery. Should all Mexico be obtained, together with 
California, and what is now Nevada, Arizona, Utah, 
New Mexico and Colorado, the slave-holding represen- 
tation in Congress might become the most powerful 
republic in the world, and set back the clock of civiliza- 
tion several centuries, Webster, therefore, while ex- 
pressing entire willingness to vote all necessary sup- 
plies for the war, insisted at the same time on offers of 
peace. His labors were all directed to stopping the 

439 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

war as soon as possible, stopping the thirst for conquest 
before it became insatiable, and getting us out of the 
scrape with as little slave territory as possible. 

He would preserve the integrity of the Mexican 
republic as far as possible ; leave it with all the territory 
possible; for in spite of any shortcomings it may have 
had as a republic, it had freed its slaves. Texas had 
been annexed to the Union under a Congressional pledge 
and understanding by which four new slave States could 
be formed out of its vast domain, and how many more 
might be formed out of additional vast deserts in the 
Southwest was a terrible situation to contemplate. 

Mr. Wilmot, a member from Pennsylvania in the 
Lower House, had introduced his famous resolution, 
tacked on to the end of an appropriation bill and known 
in history as the " Wilmot Proviso," that slavery should 
be excluded from all territory that might hereafter be 
acquired by the United States. This was an excellent 
idea, a very stirring one in those times. It was, they 
said, like the similar proviso in the old ordinance of 
1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory, 
the proviso of which it was disputed whether Jefferson, 
of Virginia, or Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, was the 
author, but the proviso, nevertheless, which made Ohio 
and all the region of the Great Lakes a land of free- 
dom. The free soil sentiment rallied to the idea. The 
Abolitionists, and the whole slavery-hating element of 
the North, formed themselves round it, and made it 
a party cry. It would be a vast relief and satisfaction 
if it could be carried out. Webster voted for it and 
the Abolitionists have never let him hear the end of 
that inconsistency, as they called it. 

The proviso, however, was defeated in Congress ; 
but it became a name and a symbol, almost a battle 
flag for the doctrine of the exclusion of slavery from 
the territories. In desperation at the evil look of the 
future, Webster believed in cutting off the difficulty 
at its source and admitting no new territory at all in 

440 






THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

that region; and he introduced resolutions declaring 
that the war with Mexico must not be one of conquest 
for the acquisition of new States, and that the Mexican 
government should be informed that the United States 
were ready to treat for peace and an adjustment of 
boundaries on terms liberal to Mexico. 

Similar resolutions were offered by Berrien, of 
Georgia, and the idea of total non-acquisition was by no 
means without its advocates in the South. Looking back 
at it from their lofty ground of historical perspective 
the Abolitionists denounced it as a most contemptible 
notion, an admission that we must not acquire territory 
because we had not sufficient strength or courage to 
keep slavery out of it. But the men who advocated 
non-acquisition were in responsible positions, had to 
deal with events as they arose, and had not as much 
to gain from civil war and disunion as the Abolitionists. 
The forces for acquisition, however, and American opti- 
mism that everything would turn out for the best, 
carried the day. By the treaty of peace with Mexico we 
acquired Upper California and what was then called 
New Mexico, which included the present Utah, Arizona, 
Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and part of Wyoming. 
This vast region, together with Texas, was capable of 
adding some ten large States to the Union, and twenty 
or thirty States of the size of Massachusetts. 

Another result of the Mexican War was that General 
Taylor, who had conducted its early campaigns with 
what seemed to the country very brilliant success, rap- 
idly reached a point of popularity which made him an 
obvious candidate for the Presidency. " Old Rough 
and Ready," as he was called, had spent most of his 
life in the army on the frontier, and his letters were 
not always grammatical.^ But as a candidate he far 
outshone General Winfield Scott, who had brought the 
war to a close. General Taylor's political opinions were 

* Rogers, The True Henry Clay, p. 202. 

441 



I 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

not well known ; it was not certainly known how much 
of a Whig he was. But the Whigs saw in him an 
available man. He was a Louisiana slave-holder and 
would catch southern votes ; he was a military hero 
with whom they could win as they had won with General 
Harrison. 

In April and May of 1847 Webster visited the South 
and was lavishly entertained with dinners, banquets, 
receptions, and processions at Richmond, Wilmington, 
Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah and Columbia. In our 
time we have not been accustomed to such enthusiasm 
in the South over a northerner. At Charleston the' 
ovation was really splendid ; and the speakers referred 
to their difference of opinion with Webster on nullifi- 
cation and the Constitution with a pleasant frankness 
which apparently put everybody in a good humor. Their 
distinguished guest was taken to see plantations and 
given glimpses of southern life and the slave aris- 
tocracy at the height of its power and attractiveness, 
which must have been of absorbing interest. If Web- 
ster had only kept a diary of it or written some descrip- 
tive letters they would now be invaluable. But there is 
not a word. So far as we are concerned the most stupid 
blockhead in the country might just as well have gone 
into that wonderland. Something was wrong with him. 
He was sick, his literary executor says, and it was a 
rare thing for Webster to be incapacitated by sickness. 
He had intended to go as far as New Orleans, but the 
increasing heat and his health led him to turn back 
after Savannah and Columbia. His speeches were 
poor ; the one at Columbia particularly so ; mere empti- 
ness ; and Francis Lieber, then a professor at Columbia, 
at the University of South Carolina, tells us that 
although elaborate ceremonies, illuminations by the stu- 
dents and receptions by the citizens were gotten up for 
him, he disappointed everybody by his forbidding man- 
ners. Prominent men were anxious to talk with him, 
but he had not a single conversation with any one. 

442 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

He was " cold and torpid like an alligator," and " absent 
to a degree of discourtesy which many considered 
rudeness." ^ 

Webster's hopes for a nomination were again 
blighted; and we learn how little the Whig leaders 
regarded his claims when we find them suggesting to 
him the indignity of taking second place on the ticket, 
running, in short, as Vice-President to Taylor, to help 
secure the triumph of the party. Henry Clay, though 
twice defeated as a candidate for the Presidency, had 
considerable strength in this Whig convention of 1848, 
and General Scott had some support. But Taylor, the 
rugged soldier and honest man, as he was popularly 
regarded, was nominated. No party platform was 
adopted, no declaration of principles or policy on the 
great questions before the country was made. The 
plans of the Whig leaders were to secure the Presidency, 
relying solely on the enthusiasm of the country for Tay- 
lor ; and leave principles and policies, including Taylor's 
opinions, to be settled in the future. 

This was very distasteful to Webster. The popular 
craze for a Presidential militaiy hero he disapproved of, 
as much as he had in Jackson's time. He had very 
little confidence in Taylor, knew nothing of his opin- 
ions, and did not believe he had had sufficient political 
experience for such a high office. But he had no choice 
except to advocate his election. Taylor at his worst 
would be better than a Democrat who would turn 
everything over to the extension of slavery. It was 
Webster's duty to assist in keeping the Whig party 
together, and stay with it as the only political organiza- 
tion in the country that at all represented his ideas.^ 

A large number of Whigs of a more or less Aboli- 
tionist tinge were so disgusted with the nomination 
of a slave-holder, under such circumstances, that they 

''Lieber, Life and Letters, p. 210. 

' Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 494-499. 

443 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

left the party and never returned to it. They formed 
themselves almost sim.ultaneously in various parts of 
the country into what was soon known as the Free Soil 
party, describing itself as the Constitutional Antislavery 
party as distinguished from the Abolitionists, who would 
destroy slavery and also the Constitution and Union 
if they stood in the way. The Free Soil party, grad- 
ually gathering to itself recruits from both Democrats 
and Whigs, became in a few years, as the Whigs en- 
tirely disappeared, the Republican party of the Civil 
War and modern times. 

The Free Soilers would have gladly welcomed Web- 
ster to their ranks. They wanted his eloquence ; and 
they said he should have joined them. It was a crisis, 
they said, in his life; he could have consistently parted 
from the Whigs ; and their historians have gone on to 
enlarge on this lost opportunity to " appeal to the con- 
science of the North," which would have " answered in 
tones of thunder," swept the country like a whirlwind 
and settled all the questions in 1850 that were afterwards 
settled by the Civil War of 1861. How easy and de- 
lightful it would have been ! 

But we must remember that they were asking Web- 
ster to break from his long service with the Whigs, not 
for anything in their platform, for they had adopted no 
platform, but because Taylor had been nominated partly 
to please the South and the southern Whigs and secure 
their votes, an old practice of both parties, natural 
enough, and not necessarily reprehensible. Was it not 
a little too much to ask an experienced veteran states- 
man tO' join a brand-new party, not a year old, whose 
platform against the extension of slavery was the same 
as the Whigs had often declared, and whose inexperi- 
ence and innocence were shown by nominating as their 
candidate the old Democratic fox, ex-President Martin 
Van Buren? 

Ten years later, the Free Soilers having become 
experienced, the question of joining them would have 

444 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

been a very dififerent matter. But really the suggestion 
that Webster should take the stump for Van Buren was 
almost a joke. To an enticing letter from Mr. E. Rock- 
wood Hoar, painting the glories of free soil under Van 
Buren, Webster replied : 

" It is utterly impossible for me to support the Buflfalo 
nomination ; I have no confidence in Mr. Van Buren, not tlie 
slightest. I would much rather trust General Taylor than Mr. 
Van Buren, even on this very question of slavery, for I believe 
that General Taylor is an honest man and I am sure he is not 
So much committed on the wrong side as I know Mr. Van 
Buren to have been for fifteen years. I cannot concur even 
with my best friends in giving the lead in a great question to 
a notorious opponent to the cause, besides there are other great 
interests of the country in which you and I hold Mr. Van 
Buren to be essentially wrong, and it seems to me that in con- 
senting to join a party under him Whigs must consent to bot- 
tom their party on one idea only, and also to adopt as the 
representative of that idea a head chosen on a strange emer- 
gency from among its steadiest opposers." (Works, National 
Edition, vol. xvi, p. 498.) 

In the same reply Webster speaks of another habit 
which both the Free Soilers and Abolitionists had in 
excess. There is no question that Webster and Whigs 
of his kind were opposed to the extension of slavery ; 
they had said so a thousand times. But every time they 
said so some Free Soiler or Abolitionist would conde- 
scendingly congratulate them and pat them on the back, 
declare them a convert and then charge them with 
treachery and inconsistency if they were not willing 
to jam through a Wilmot Proviso on every possible 
occasion or smash the Constitution for the sake of im- 
mediate emancipation. Their historians have continued 
the habit and brand as an enemy of freedom every 
one but an extremist. " There are those," said Web- 
ster, " who will not believe that I am an anti-slavery 
man unless I repeat the declaration once a week. I 
expect they will soon require a periodical affidavit." 

The substance of his position was that in that dark 
and troubled night he saw no " star above the horizon 

445 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

promising light to guide us, but the intelligent, patri- 
otic, united Whig party of the United States." He 
spoke with the greatest frankness of Taylor's short- 
comings, his extreme inexperience in civil and political 
life, and said that it was a nomination not fit to have 
been made. He went so far in this direction that he 
offended Taylor's friends, although at the same time 
he advocated the election of Taylor in his most forcible 
manner as the only safe course to be pursued. " The 
safest way is to overlook the nomination as not being 
the main thing, and to continue to maintain the Whig 
cause." 

He was really a party man of most remarkable inde- 
pendence. He stated his exact position at this time, 
his determined opposition to any extension of slavery 
into the territories, his opinion of Taylor and the neces- 
sity of his election. He amplified and enlarged these 
points with his inexhaustible faculty for detail and ex- 
actitude. We read it all with pleasure and with pride. 
It is convincing, satisfying; it built up his reputation 
for the future ; but in its superb independence we see 
why he was not in those days an available man for the 
Presidency. 

Indeed it has always been difficult, and is still diffi- 
cult, for a member of long service in either House of 
Congress to become an available candidate for the Presi- 
dency. It may be because he has said too much, his 
opinions are too well known and he has aroused opposi- 
tion and acquired enemies. It sometimes seems as if 
the people preferred for President a man whose opinions 
were still to be developed ; as if they wanted the excite- 
ment and risk of discovering them ; or it may be that 
they instinctively feel that the head of the nation should 
be a man as unlike as possible and of a different class 
and experience from the legislators whom he is to 
criticize and veto. 

Men so full of original ideas, who had said and 
argued so much as Webster and Henry Clay, very 

446 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

naturally found difficulty in attaining the Presidency. 
Clay, whO' had a large and most enthusiastic following 
of devoted admirers, wore himself out at it. When he 
failed of a nomination, or when his nomination failed 
of an election, as so often happened, these admirers 
were amazed ; they had expected him to sweep the coun- 
try ; they could not understand his failure ; many of 
them were grief-stricken and cried like children. 

It has been said of Webster that he never could 
attain the Presidency because he was all head and no 
heart. But there was Clay, the Mill Boy of the Slashes, 
Honest Harry, Harry of the West, Harry the Brave 
and the True, who notoriously reached their hearts and 
seemed tO' have them screaming for him as they screamed 
for Jackson, and yet he never got very much nearer the 
Presidency than Webster. Both of them the people 
seemed to think belonged in the Senate. In fact, Web- 
ster once said that the Senate was his natural home. 
Both of them were set aside for a Taylor, a Harrison, 
or a Jackson, so inferior to them in ability and state- 
craft, that the contrast was ludicrous. 

James Russell Lowell, writing in the Standard at 
this time, ridiculed in his best strain of humor the deep 
disappointment Webster was generally believed to have 
felt at the loss of this nomination. 

" Meanwhile the greatest mind of any age is sulking at 
Marshfield. It has had its rattle taken away from it. It 
has been told that nominations were not good for it. It has 
not been allowed to climb up the back of the Presidential 
chair. We have a fancy that a truly great mind can move the 
world as well from a three-legged stool in a garret as from 
the easiest cushion in the White House. Where the great 
mind is there is the President's house, whether at Wood's HoU 
or Washington." (Scudder, Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 221.) 

Very likely he was not quite as bitter about it as 
people supposed ; and we have some evidence on this 
point from his farm superintendent at Marshfield, Por- 
ter Wright, who lived to be over ninety and with whom 

447 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Judge Aldrich, of New Hampshire, had several con- 
versations which he has kindly given me an account 
of in a recent letter. 

" He spoke of one time in particular of his [Webster's] 
coming out in the gray of the morning, filling his side pockets 
with ears of corn, with others under his arms, and starting 
at one end of the stable in front of the feeding place and 
passing out an ear to each ox as he came to him, holding it 
off, so that the ox would have to make a great effort to reach 
it, his manner being like the playfulness of youth. After pass- 
ing the length of the long stable he turned to the farmer and 
said gravely, ' Well, Porter Wright, I have lost the Presidency. 
It, of course, is a great disappointment, and I suppose you have 
had your disappointments. We shall not be here very long 
and when we are gone they will say some good things of us 
and some bad things; but there is one thing they cannot fairly 
charge against us, they cannot say that we are late in getting 
up in the morning.' " 

That year 1848 was a sad one for Webster. His 
son Edward, who had gone to the war, died in Mexico 
of typhoid fever, on the 23d of January. Still worse 
for him was the loss of his only daughter, Julia, who had 
married Mr. Appleton, and died of consumption on the 
28th of April. Julia had been his particular delight, 
had designed his librars^ at Marshfield, reminded him 
of her mother, and was much of a companion. Her 
lingering illness was very painful to him. Shortly after 
the deaths of these two children he collected some others 
of the family one day at Marshfield, and taking two 
young elm trees in his hands planted them on the lawn 
in front of the house, a memorial, he said, to the brother 
and the sister, and they are still growing there, one 
of the few distinctive characteristics of him that remain 
on the place. 

This was the time of Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, 
who in his country's cause dared to defy the power of 
Russia, and in the end sought asylum with the Sultan 
of Turkey, from whom the Emperor of Russia de- 
manded him. Excitement, sympathy and indigna- 
tion were aroused in the whole civilized world, and 

448 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

as it was doubtful whether the Sultan would not sur- 
render him, one of our war vessels brought him to 
America. It was an obvious occasion for Webster's 
oratory, and one of his speeches, especially one passage 
of it, at a great gathering in Boston, was long remem- 
bered. 

" Gentlemen, there is something on earth greater than arbi- 
trary or despotic powers. The lightning has its power, and the 
whirlwind has its power, and the earthqviake has its power; 
but there is something among men more capable of shaking 
despotic thrones than lightning, whirlwind or earthquake, and 
that is the aroused and excited indignation of the whole civilized 
world. The Emperor of Russia is the supreme law-giver in 
his own realms, and, for aught I know, he is the executor of 
that law also. But thanks be to God, he is not the supreme law- 
giver and executor of international law, and every offence 
against that is an offence against the rights of the civilized 
world." 

It was another fine specimen of his ability to call 
the powers of nature to the aid of his eloquence, and 
the Abolitionists used to remind him that they were 
" the excited indignation of the whole civilized world " 
and suggest that he join them or be dashed to pieces 
in their whirlwind. 

But Kossuth and the Hungarians began to take on 
a troublesome form. Kossuth was an unexpectedly 
good orator in English. Extracts from his orations 
used to be recited by our schoolboys side by side with 
the orations of Webster ; and some of us can still remem- 
ber that stirring sentence, " It was not I who inspired 
the Hungarian people, it was the Hungarian people who 
inspired me." In short, he began to inspire the Ameri- 
can people and seemed to be leading them to force their 
government to interfere in European politics contrary 
to our rule for such cases made and provided. The 
conservatives began to lean towards suppressing or 
checking him; and about that time Webster's friend, 
Mr. Colt, of New Jersey, gave him a Hungarian bull 
for Marshfield. The bull was somewhat of a white 
29 449 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

elephant and Webster sent it up to his Elms Farm in 
New Hampshire, where one day it threw John Taylor 
on the ground, and was about to gore him to death, 
when that sturdy farmer got his fingers in its nose and 
held it till help arrived. He was badly injured and had 
to go to bed. Webster, arriving soon after, went in 
much anxiety to see his favorite man, who remarked 
that he nourished no enmity towards the bull, " but he 
is no more fit to be at large, sir, than Kossuth himself." 
It was the sort of thing that delighted Webster like 
the hits in politics Seth Peterson used to make ; and 
ever since then the whole world has known what John 
Taylor said of Kossuth. 

The plans of the Whig leaders in regard to General 
Taylor were justified by the success with which they 
met. He was elected in the autumn of 1848, principally. 
it is said, because the Free Soil candidates took so 
many votes from the Democrats that the electoral vote 
of New York went to the Whigs. 

During the following winter and spring the great 
question of slavery in golden California and the vast 
deserts of the New Mexico region was the most absorb- 
ing subject in Congress. The southern Democrats 
pressed for recognition of their doctrine that a slave- 
holder of any State should have the right to carry his 
human property into any of the territories of the Union, 
and have it recognized there as property. The terri- 
tories belonged to the whole Union, had been conquered 
by the blood and treasure of the whole Union, and as sla- 
very was recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution, 
why should not the owner of slaves retain them if he mi- 
grated with them into a territory that was the common 
property of all the States ? Some northerners were for 
settling the question by the Wilmot Proviso excluding 
slavery from all new territory. Others were for set- 
tling it by prolonging the Missouri Compromise west- 
ward, prohibiting slavery north of latitude 36° 30' and 
allowing it south of that line. 

450 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

Suddenly a great change came over the whole sub- 
ject. The scattered people of the deserts of New 
Mexico assembled in convention and petitioned Con- 
gress to establish a territorial government over them 
excluding slavery. Calhoun denounced the petition as 
insolent. But there was still another surprise for him 
and his friends w^hen evidence began to accumulate 
that from the nature of the soil and climate New Mexico 
would not produce cotton, rice, sugar, or tobacco, and 
was not at all fitted to make a profitable use of slave 
labor. 

The greatest surprise of all came from California. 
Gold had been discovered there ; immigrants had poured 
in; they met together in convention, formed themselves 
into a State with a Constitution expressly prohibiting 
slaver}', and asked to be admitted into the Union as a 
free State. 

All this changed the situation very considerably. 
The southerners were disappointed. It was not going 
to be so easy to make slavery national and freedom 
sectional as it had at first seemed. The North was cor- 
respondingly elated ; and no longer so uneasy lest eight 
or ten slave States should be made from the conquered 
territory and upset more than ever the balance of power 
in Congress. California had declared for freedom, and 
any States formed out of the New Mexico region would 
also probably be free. 

The slaveholding interest saw' their doom and pre- 
pared for a fiercer struggle. The important thing to 
keep in mind in the history of this period for the next 
ten years is that the South grew steadily weaker and 
the North steadily stronger. At every turn of the 
situation the facts were usually against the South. In 
their desperation the South soon began those filibuster- 
ing expeditions to encourage rebellion in Cuba, wrest 
it from Spain, and annex it as slave territory to the 
United States. They also looked towards securing the 
Sandwich Islands for the same purpose. 

451 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

There was plenty of uneasiness on both sides ; and 
in 1849 the whole question was quite evidently nearing 
a crisis. The Abolitionists had been gaining strength, 
organizing themselves into conventions and societies, 
and spreading throughout the North with alarming 
rapidity. The old argument, the stronghold of conser- 
vatives like Webster, that the Constitution guaranteed 
slavery in the South, that it was to be absolutely let 
alone, neither increased nor diminished, this agreement 
and understanding that had been faithfully kept by the 
North and had quieted the South for fifty years, was 
losing all its effect. The people were no longer stand- 
ing in awe of it. The Abolitionists laughed at it. They 
boldly announced that they would wipe human slavery 
off the face of the earth, and if the American Consti- 
tution perished with it that would be the fault of the 
Constitution. 

The most serious practical effect of their doctrines 
was that the people of many, if not most, of the north- 
ern States would no longer assist in returning escaped 
slaves to the South. They were more inclined to en- 
courage them to escape. The slaves were concealed, 
fed, protected, and often passed on to Canada, where 
there was no question of their safety. Not only were 
the northern people unwilling to assist in executing the 
old fugitive slave laws enacted by Congress in 1793 to 
carry out the slavery guaranty of the Constitution, but 
the Legislatures of several States followed the lead of 
Massachusetts in passing acts making it a penal offence 
for any State officers or magistrates to assist in execut- 
ing the fugitive slave laws of Congress. 

As a matter of cold fact there were probably not as 
many instances of slaves escaping to the North and 
assisted in their escape as was supposed. If all the 
stories we read of the " underground railroad," the 
Abolitionist method of passing slaves to Canada, were 
true, Canada would be nearly half filled with a negro 
population. The instances of the return of slaves under 

452 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

the fugitive laws of Congress had up to this time also 
been comparatively few. Webster made a special point 
of investigating through members of Congress the exact 
number returned, or attempted to be returned, from 
New England. No alleged fugitive slave, he found, 
had ever been seized in Maine, New Hampshire, Ver- 
mont, or Rhode Island. An attempt had been made to 
seize one in Connecticut, but the negro was discharged 
for want of proof. Several instances had occurred in 
Massachusetts, but the history of only one was known 
with certainty. There were, of course, instances of kid- 
napping or abducting of negroes by persons not profess- 
ing to be claiming their own slaves under the laws of 
Congress ; but the instances of legal enforcement of 
the fugitive slave laws were very few.* 

As a matter of fact, when compared with the three 
million of them that remained in the South, the number 
of slaves that sought freedom in the North was not as 
many as we might suppose. This w^as true even in the 
Civil War when northern annies were invading the 
South. Their fidelity to their masters, their voluntary 
willingness to protect their master's property and his 
wife and children while the master himself was fighting 
in the Confederate army against negro freedom, is now 
one of the proudest boasts of the southern people ; the 
proof, as they consider it, of their good treatment of 
their slaves. 

Henry Clay was fond of telling of one of his house- 
hold slaves, who had run away to the North, but becom- 
ing dissatisfied sent to her mistress for money that she 
might return to slavery. Clay emancipated his slaves 
at his death ; but preferred to take care of them while 

. he lived. To a Quaker Abolitionist who upbraided him 

■he said: 

'■ I have for many years owned a slave that I wished would 
leave me, but he will not. What my treatment of my slaves is 
you may learn from my man Charles, who accompanies me on 



! 



\ * Curtis, vol. ii, p. 425. 

4S3 



1 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

this journey, and who has travelled with me over the greater 
part of the United States and in both the Canadas, and has 
had a thousand opportunities, if he had chosen to embrace 
them, to leave me." (Rogers, True Henry Clay, pp. 155, 349.) 

There were instances, of course, the other way. 
Slavery was an evil, and no one was more firmly con- 
vinced of that than Clay. But in his own State, Ken- 
tucky, slavery was said to be mildly administered. 

The comparatively small number of instances of the 
enforcement of the fugitive slave laws and the small 
number of instances of escaping slaves, compared to the 
millions of them in the South, though important for us 
to consider in order to understand the question, were 
without a particle of weight or importance among the 
Abolitionists of the year 1850. It would have made 
no difference to them if there had been only one instance 
or no instance at all. They had become convinced and 
inspired by a moral principle, a moral idea one of the 
most arousing and ennobling that has ever come into 
the world. It was sweeping everything before it. Eng- 
land, France, even half-civilized Mexico', had freed their 
slaves. Was America to retain hers on the plea that 
the Constitution protected them? The Abolitionists 
had started out to destroy slavery and the whole prin- 
ciple and idea of slavery, and nothing would stop them. 
According to their statistics given by Theodore Parker 
in his Faneuil Hall speech of March 27, 1850, some 
30,000 slaves had fled to the North; the North held 
$15,000,000 worth of them and Maryland and Delaware 
each lost $100,000 worth annually. 

The southerners, on the other hand, were inspired 
by the idea of defending themselves and extending the 
area and the profitableness of slavery in cotton planting. 
The recent emancipation by England, France and 
Mexico had on them the opposite effect it had on the 
North. It aroused them to defend slavery and believe 
in it at every hazard. Cotton they believed was king 
and would become a greater king. It seemed profitable 

454 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

already with only a small area of the South devoted 
to its culture. It was only just beginning to spread 
into the region of Alabama and Mississippi. What 
would be its power, not only in America, but in the 
financial world of Europe, when it was carried with the 
cheap labor of slaves into the vast regions of Texas, if 
not into New Mexico and California? This was the 
dream of the South, and it must be confessed it was a 
captivating one. Northern minds were carried away 
by it ; and it would not be southern capital alone that 
would extend the cotton area southwestward throuofh 
Mississippi to Louisiana and Texas. 

For fifteen years afterwards in political cartoons and 
satires cotton was always represented as a King. The 
southern people fought the Civil War of 1861 on the faith 
that he was King; that his financial importance would 
sustain them in the contest more than all the ships, the 
mines, the factories, and the varied agriculture of the 
North; that the bankers, the capitalists, the business, 
the commerce of Europe were so dependent on cotton 
that when they found themselves deprived of it by the 
war, they would sustain the South and make her an 
independent confederacy for the sake of King Cotton. 
It was the utter failure of this exaggerated and mis- 
taken financial supposition that brought on the final 
collapse of the southern confederacy. 

But although a mistaken notion in the extreme sense 
in which the South relied upon it, there is no doubt that 
cotton raising was an industry of importance in the 
South, as it still is, and that with slave labor it seemed 
particularly profitable in new regions just reclaimed 
from wilderness or a semi-wilderness condition. There 
was a well-founded belief that as civilization closed up. 
slave labor became less and less profitable, until at last 
it would stand as a dead loss and the community would 
slowly grow poorer, values would shrink ; and this 
condition is supposed to have already begun in the old 
parts of the South. But in the newer regions towards 

455 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the southwest the conditions were the reverse, seemed 
very favorable to slavery, and the prospects of profit 
and reward to men of energy and a little capital were 
very alluring. What could be more fascinating to a 
man of Anglo-Saxon blood than to buy a few slaves 
and set them to clearing some cheap wilderness land 
for cotton, while the owner enjoyed the field sports 
and outdoor life of the mild climate with abundance of 
game and the prospect of making a fortune. Thousands 
of plantations were being created in this way; and 
soon the sugar plantations, created in the same way 
by gangs of slaves felling the great forests of the 
Mississippi bottoms, began to creep up through Louisi- 
ana along the great river. It was a man's work, enter- 
prising, grand; and the slaves themselves enjoyed it; 
there is no doubt of all that. 

The southern people would tolerate no interference 
with this southwestward movement, no interference 
with King Cotton and his slaves in either the old or the 
new parts of the South. The comment and criticism, 
the assertion of moral superiority by the northern Abo- 
litionists stung them to the quick. They began to re- 
sent almost everything that was not a laudation of 
slavery. From having been a community filled with 
emancipation societies, freely admitting the evils of 
slavery and talking continually of future emancipation 
a great deal more than the North, they now became the 
enemies of emancipation and freedom. As fast as the 
northern Abolitionists built up a greater mass of reason- 
ing and eloquence against slavery than had ever before 
been heard of in the world, the southerners heaped up 
on their side a most unusual defence of slavery. They 
saw in it new beatitudes, merits and wonders of which 
they had been entirely unconscious fifty years before. 
"Slavery," said Calhoun, "has benefited all mankind; 
has spread its fertilizing influences over all the 
world. The southern planter has been the tutor, the 

456 



THE MEXICAN WAR AND SLAVERY 

friend as well as the master of the slave and has raised 
him up to civilization." ^ They began to prove that 
the condition and happiness of their slaves were far 
superior to the condition of the free laborers of the 
North. They retaliated upon New England by taking 
from' every New England ship that came into a southern 
port the free black sailors and locking them up in prison 
until the ship departed ; and this was done for the 
reason, they said, that the free blacks would contaminate 
the happy southern slaves. 

As the Abolition movement in the North rapidly 
drew to its side religious sentiment, as the churches 
became the means of propagating Abolitionism, the 
southern people in their turn showed that slavery was 
justified by the Holy Scriptures ; they showed it to be 
a humane and beneficent institution for the uplifting 
of African savages; a " great religious, social and moral 
blessing." The pulpits of the South became as ardent 
propagandists for servitude as the pulpits of the North 
for freedom ; and if their measures for extending the 
area of slavery and making the slaveholding interest 
dominant failed, the South stood ready to fall back upon 
the doctrines of nullification and secession from the 
Union, which Hayne and Calhoun had been compelled 
to prepare and build up in anticipation of this crisis. 

In order that the North might be freed from any 
obligation to enforce the fugitive slave laws of Congress 
specious theories were invented by the Abolitionists and 
their lawyers that the guaranteed protection of slavery 
in the Constitution was not a part of the instrument, but 
a mere understanding or compact added on, and as it 
was an immoral compact, the party who regarded it as 
immoral could withdraw from its performance and leave 
the other party to any remedy he could find. Another 
theory was that the guaranty in the Constitution had 
been intended to rest entirely on the individual States 

"Wilson's Slave Power in America. 

457 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

to carry out, and the fugitive slave acts of Congress 
were therefore unconstitutional and void. But the 
principal feeling that the Abolitionists worked most 
successfully with was that " the higher law," as it was 
called, the law of God, the law above all codes and con- 
stitutions, forbids the surrender of a fugitive slave. 
On this broad theme there were no limits to the elo- 
quence of the Phillipses, the Giddingses, the Garrisons, 
the Whittiers, the Sewards, the Wilmots, and the Sun> 
ners, not to mention the Lowells, the Longfellows, and 
the Emersons. High-spirited, unselfish, devoted men 
they were. Their cause, their purpose were ennobling, 
but their methods, their disunionism were violent, reck- 
less and extreme ; and they had to be held within the 
traces by men of the stamp of Clay, Webster and Lin- 
coln, who in the end held them in check until emancipa- 
tion could be accomplished and at the same time the 
Union saved. 



4S8 



XVIII 

THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND ITS CONSE- 
QUENCES 

In the session of Congress of the winter of 1849-50 
the whole question of slavery came up for debate. No 
one could think much of anything else, hardly any other 
business was done ; and even the annual appropriation 
bill was negelcted. The South felt that it must win ; 
must extend the area of slavery rather than leave it as 
it was. Above all it must not go backward. That 
would mean defeat and ruin if the North could once 
start the South on a retreat. 

The extension of the Missouri Compromise line of 
latitude 36° 30' to the Pacific, allowing slavery below 
it and prohibiting it above, would not satisfy the Aboli- 
tionists and radical Whigs. They insisted on excluding 
slavery forever from the territories by the Wilmot 
Proviso, that is, by a formal positive enactment like 
the old ordinance of 1787 for the government of the 
Northwest Territory, which excluded slavery, and they 
were for forcing such a proviso through as a settlement 
of the question and a stop to all further increase of the 
slaveholding power. The South was violently opposed 
to the Wilmot Proviso, and regarded it, if passed, as a 
direct defiance and insult to them and a sufficient 
justification for seceding from the Union. It would 
be the last straw, they said. They were simply waiting 
to see if it would be done; and if it were done, out of 
the Union they would go, no matter what the conse- 
quences. They were not only against the passage of 
the Wilmot Proviso, but they wanted a distinct recog- 
nition by Congress of a constitutional right in the south- 
ern people to carry their slaves into territories which 
were the common property of the Union. One side 

459 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

wanted slavery excluded forever from the territories; 
the other wanted it permanently permitted there. 

In this predicament Henry Clay, seventy-two years 
old, his superb vigor shattered to feebleness and slowly 
dying, came forward with the last of his great compro- 
mise measures, those measures which he had such re- 
markable genius for carrying through against all objec- 
tions and difficulties. 

His plan now was to avoid all positive or sweeping 
measures like the Wilmot Proviso, or any measure that 
would give offence to the South. At the same time 
he intended to prevent the extreme southerners from 
pressing their idea of a distinct recognition of a con- 
stitutional right to carry slaves into the territories. 
Webster had also reached this conclusion. Clay set 
forth his compromise in eight resolutions : 

1. To admit California as a State without any condition 
for or against slavery. This was on the side of the North ; 
for there was every probability that slavery would never 
be introduced by the Californians, and they had already pro- 
hibited it by their constitution. 

2. To establish territorial government in the rest of the 
region conquered from Mexico without any provision for or 
against slavery. This referred to the region called New 
Mexico, including the present Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, 
Nevada, Colorado and part of Wyoming. It was almost tanta- 
mount to dedicating that region to freedom because slavery 
would not be profitable there and presumably would not be 
adopted. Thus the first and second resolutions were intended 
to accomplish for the North about all that would be accom- 
plished by the Wilmot Proviso and at the same time avoid 
offending the South by passing that very bluntly worded proviso 
which professed to settle the question against the South posi- 
tively and forever. 

3. The western boundary of Texas to be fixed so as to 
give up to New Mexico a larger share of land than Texas 
seemed willing to allow. This was a serious point. Texas 
claimed nearly the whole of New Mexico and was believed 
ready to march her troops into it to take possession and dedi- 
cate it to slavery. A conflict with the United States troops 
in New Mexico would have followed and this bloodshed, it 
was believed, would precipitate civil war between North and 
South. 

460 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

4. That in consideration of Texas relinquishing her claim 
to part of New Mexico the United States should pay that part 
of the public debt of Texas which had been contracted before 
annexation. The claim of Texas to part of New Mexico was 
a difficulty which prevented the settlement of the larger ques- 
tion ; and this fourth resolution, with the third, was intended 
to dispose of the boundary dispute and give as much territory 
to New Mexico and, therefore, as much to freedom as possible. 

5. Slavery in the District of Columbia to be left undisturbed 
until both Marj'land and the people of the District were will- 
ing to have it abolished and then the owners of the slaves 
to be compensated. The Abolitionists, and many who were not 
Abolitionists, had been denouncing slavery at the seat of gov- 
ernment as a national disgrace, and had been insistent for its 
abolition. Even some southerners who considered slavery a 
necessity, believed that the selling and trading in slaves at 
the seat of government was scandalous. Other southerners 
regarded the abolition of slavery in the District as an insult 
and a weakening of their cause. This fifth resolution gave the 
Abolitionists some hope and made no immediate change in 
slavery in the District. 

6. Trade in slaves brought to the District of Columbia for 
that purpose to be prohibited. This, it was supposed, would 
gradually abolish slavery in the District. 

7. Better laws for the return of fugitive slaves. This 
was in some respects the most vital part of the compromise. 

8. Congress to be declared to have no authority over the 
trade in slaves between States in which slavery was established 
by law. 

Such, in brief, was the famous measure which has 
passed into history as the Omnibus Bill or Compromise 
Act of 1850. It was ingenious, practical. It gave 
everybody something. What it gave the Abolitionists, 
the extremists among them rejected with contempt; but 
it was more than they had ever had before. To a vast 
number of conservative people throughout the country, 
both Whigs and Democrats, the sort of people who 
had, on previous occasions, inclined towards Clay's 
ideas, and made him popular and successful, to these 
people the compromise was eminently satisfactory and 
seemed statesmanlike and wise. 

On a winter evening of weather hardly fit for Clay 
to go out, he came to Webster's house to submit to 
him the compromise plan and obtain his support. It 

461 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

was a strange and pathetic meeting. The two men, 
giants of intellect in their way, had in their early days 
been on familiar terms, and some very friendly letters 
from Clay are to be found among Webster's papers. J 
Their ambition for the Presidency and the Compromise ' 
of 1833 had caused some estrangement, and Clay had 
taken part with the Whigs who denounced Webster 
for remaining in Tyler's cabinet. But all hopes of 
the Presidency were now gone from Clay's life. He 
seemed feeble, had a bad cough, and became quite 
exhausted in explaining his plan which he intended 
shortly to lay before the Senate. Webster was deeply 
touched, and when his visitor had gone, spoke of him 
with great kindness. He agreed in substance with the 
plan ; and spoke of its author's purpose as noble and 
highly patriotic ; " that perhaps Providence had de- 
signed the return of Mr. Clay to the Senate to afford 
the means and the way of averting a great evil from our 
country." ^ 

This was a turning point, a strange turning point, ,■ 
in Webster's career, just at its close, when he had only 
two more years to live. So far as he was concerned, 
the plan was a very dangerous one. A large portion 
of his Massachusetts constituents were ardent, not to 
say fanatical, advocates of the Wilmot Proviso. They * 
had decided that there should be no more compromises 
with slavery and they looked upon Clay's plan very 
much as some of them regarded the Constitution, — " a 
covenant with death and a league with hell." 

Independently of their numbers, many of them were 
men of such high talents, such masters of language, 
poets, orators, preachers, wits, essayists, Lonsffellow, 
Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Whittier, Sumner, 
Lowell, in fact, almost the whole galaxy of the famous 
New England literary men and pulpit orators of that 
centun% then just reaching the maturity of their powers, 



^Curtis, vol. ii, p. 397' 

462 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

that they were able to fix upon Webster's reputation a 
stigma from which it has not yet recovered. 

To have the whole literary talent against one was 
certainly a heavy load for any reputation to bear. 
Webster was perhaps unable to realize how severe it 
would be in the future. He could hardly have foreseen 
that even the modem Republican party would largely 

i accept the Abolitionist opinion of him. He had the 
support of the commercial classes. The merchants, 
bankers and business men were largely in favor of com- 
promise ; but they had no orators or eminent writers 

, to speak for them ; and the Abolitionist element was so 

j strong in this respect that in later times they were able 
to lead many people to believe that Webster had no 
support at all. 

He foresaw a great deal of this and knew what he 
was doing. He would, he said, devote himself to the 
cause of Clay's compromise in the Senate, " no matter 

I what might befall himself at the North." The Wilmot 
Proviso, he said, should be no shibboleth for him. He 
would not assist to extend slavery into the territories ; 
but if New Mexico were let alone she would not have 
slavery any more than California; that it was useless 
and worse than useless to arouse, insult and irritate the 
South by interdicting slavery in a region where it could 
not exist. 

On the 29th of January, 1850, eight days after his 
interview with Webster, Henry Clay offered in the 
Senate his compromise resolutions and supported them 
in a most interesting and tactful speech. He hit slavery 
so hard once or twice, calling some phases of it an 
abomination, that southern members reminded him that 
he came from a slave State and the consequences. To 
which he replied that he would attend to his own conse- 
quences and leave them to attend to theirs. The debate, 
with varying phases of excitement and violence, lasted 
for eight months. The Constitution of California was 
submitted and various other proposals relating to 

463 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

slavery. During February Webster took no part in 
the debate. He evidently listened and pondered pro- 
foundly, revolving in his mind the interminable intrica- 
cies and details of the problem that in a few years 
would shake the nation to its foundations. The speeches 
were violent and fierce. Dissolution of the Union was 
talked of and threatened on all sides ; and hundreds 
of thousands of people throughout the country believed 
it imminent and were inclined more and more to Clay's 
ideas of compromise. Webster received many letters 
describing the danger to the Union and calling on him 
to save it. 

There was now a party in the North in favor of dis- 
solution headed by the extreme Abolitionists of Ohio 
and Massachusetts. At a meeting in Faneuil Hall, in 
Boston, in January, they resolved " That we seek a 
dissolution of the Union." ..." We do hereby 
declare, ourselves the enemies of the Constitution. Union 
and Government of the United States, and the friends 
of the new confederacy of States, where there shall 
be no union with slaveholders." Horace Mann de- 
clared that disunion and civil war, even a servile war, 
would be better than any extension of slavery.- Extremes 
were meeting. The extreme advocates of slavery and 
the extreme opponents of slavery were both preparing 
to leave the Union; each declaring that it was the 
only remedv for their complaint; and soon the news 
came that the southern extremists were sending dele- 
gates to a secession convention at Nashville in 
Tennessee. 

Webster had always been slow to believe in any 
immediate dissolution of the Union. He had opposed 
Clay's compromise to save the Union from the threat- 
ened rebellion of South Carolina in 1833, declaring such 
a compromise unnecessary; and so now in the early 
part of February, 1850, in spite of the violent language 



Appendix to Congressional Globe, vol. xxii, Part I, p. 260. 

464 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

all round him, and although he favored Clay's com- 
promise plan and saw great danger to the Union in 
} the future from slavery, he was, nevertheless, notin- 
■ clined to believe that there would be any immediate 
overt attempt to break up the Union. 

" All this agitation," he writes on January 13th, " I think 
j will subside. . . . The Union is not in danger. . . 
I " I do not propose to take part, at present, in the fiery 

discussion of these topics ; but if anything is proposed to 
; be done, by way of attempting to carry evil purposes into effect, 
I I shall have something to say." (Works, National Edition, 

vol. xvi, p. 530.) 

About a week after the above letter Clay visited him 
and submitted his compromise plan, which Webster 
approved of in substance. On the 29th of January 
the plan was introduced in the Senate by Clay, and 
on February 13th and 14th we find Webster writing: 
" California will come in ; New Mexico will be post- 
poned ; no bones will be broken." 

The increasing violence was bringing intimations 

and letters that real danger of open secession in the 

, South was approaching, but still he replies that he 

, does " not partake in any degree in those apprehen- 

; sions." On the 24th, however, he had begun to change 

' his opinion. '' I am nearly broken down," he writes, 

" with labor and anxiety. I know not how to meet the 

present emergency, or with what weapons to beat down 

the northern and southern follies now raging in equal 

extremes." ^ 

Soon after that he must have gone over entirely to 
the opinion of imminent danger, believed that the seces- 
sion convention in Tennessee was no idle parade, and 
that six or seven southern States were prepared to 
secede. Those States had all passed secession resolu- 
,tions. If only one had passed secession resolutions as 
jin 1833, it would be a trifle; but seven made it serious. 

^ Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 532, 533. 
30 465 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The foregoing quotations are given because of the 
charge afterwards made by the AboHtionists that he in- 
tended at first to " come out for freedom," as they 
called it. That is, oppose Clay's compromise, repudiate 
the agreement with Texas, refuse to pass a new fugitive 
slave law, declare slavery prohibited forever in all new 
territory, set the South at defiance, and let her do her 
worst in going out of the Union, in the conviction 
that she either would not dare go out, or if she did go 
out, would find it impossible to maintain slavery alone in 
the face of the whole civilized world and would soon 
petition to come back into the Union without slavery. 
From this Abolitionist position, they say, Webster sud- 
denly changed to a supporter of slavery for the sake of 
winning southern votes for the Presidency. 

I do not think that the letters show any such motive. 
They merely show him considering the subject, as was 
his usual custom, waiting, watching events and opin- 
ions. As to his intending to deliver an Abolitionist 
or Free Soil speech, that would have been such a rever- 
sion of his whole past and of all his opinions as we know 
them, that it is impossible to suppose it, and it would 
require overwhelming evidence to prove it. He 
approved in substance Clay's compromise plan from 
the beginning, that is, from January 21st, when Clay 
first consulted him about it, and subsequent events con- 
firmed him more and more in approval of it. 

The Abolitionists professed to have proof of his 
sudden change from Abolitionism to compromise, but 
they never produced it. Theodore Parker, in his two 
addresses on the subject, said that he had seen letters, 
or that his friends had letters proving it, but the letters 
were never produced. Joshua Giddings said that he 
talked with Webster on the subject and understood 
from him that he was meditating a strong anti-slavery 
speech, and that other Abolitionists and Free Soilers 
got the same impression, and that he submitted a skele- 
ton of his speech to the leaders of the Free Soil party.' 

466 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

Very likely Mr. Giddings and others understood Web- 
ster to say what they wanted and hoped to have him 
say ; but that amounts to nothing as proof or evidence.* 
It is important to note in this connection that Web- 
j ster believed that a "civil war, consequent upon an at- 
I tempt to secede and break up the Union, would not 
■ abolish slavery. He opposed emphatically the opinion 
i of the Abolitionists that by such a convulsion the cause 
of emancipation would be promoted. " In my judg- 
ment," he wrote Dr. Furness, " confusion, conflict, em- 
. bittered controversy, violence, bloodshed and civil war, 
il would only rivet the chains oi slavery the more 
l[ strongly." 

t The guess of the Abolitionists that a civil war would 
j abolish slavery turned out to be correct as to the Civil 
War some ten or fifteen years later. Whether it would 
have been correct for a civil war in 1850 is another ques- 
tion. We must also remember that Webster's opinion 
"I was shared in 1850 by an immense number of the stead- 
\ I iest and most conservative people of the North ; they 
did not believe that the Union would survive a civil 
war ; a dissolution of the Union meant to them the per- 
S| manent establishment of slavery in the South; and civil 
war as a protection to slavery may be said to have 
n been the faith and hope of the South at that time. 

There were few rninds bold enough in 1850, or, as 

[ would have been said at that time, insane enough, to 

I i entertain the double thought that in a civil war the Union 

jij could be saved and slavery abolished. That was an 

5 1 ideal of a dozen years later, when Lincoln stood upon 

((the principle of three ideas — ''the Constitution, the 

i Union, and the freedom of mankind." That was Web- 

ister's ideal also; but in 1850 he believed a civil war 

[would shatter it. Under the conditions of 1850 he 

j believed that the Constitution and the Union could be 

saved for the time being only by a compromise, leaving 

— , — — . — , 

; ' 'Wilson, Rise of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 242; Rhodes, 
il History of the United States, vol. i, pp. 148, 149. 

467 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

the freedom of mankind to be worked out gradually by 
some form of emancipation. He believed that free 
labor would ultimately prevail throughout the country, 
including the South, as it had in New England and the 
Middle States.^ If he had thought all three ideas could 
have been accomplished by civil war, he might have been 
willing to accept civil war at once. His opinion was 
that of millions of conservatives North and South. 

By the end of February, having listened to two 
months of debate, he decided that the time for the state- 
ment of his own opinions had come, and on the 7th of 
March he delivered to crowded galleries the speech 
which has always been known by that date. He him- 
self preferred to call it " The Constitution and the 
Union." It was merely in recommendation of the Clay 
compromise resolutions ; but so comprehensive were its 
statements, so vivid and powerful its arguments, that 
Clay's reasoning in support of his own measure was 
forgotten and the heaviest part of the abuse and unpopu- 
larity for a compromise with the slave power fell upon 
Webster instead of upon Clay, the originator of the 
measure. 

It is probable that no speech Webster ever made in 
the Senate, perhaps not even the reply to Calhoun, was 
thought out so thoroughly, and with such complete 
preparation. Seventeen pages of notes weire found 
among his papers. But the notes he used in speaking 
were all on two small scraps of paper. He had it so 
well in hand that he hardly needed notes in speaking. 
The whole of it had evidently been revolved over and 
over again in that powerful mind and memory, until 
the delivery of it was a mere recital. 

It is for that reason, perhaps, that it is so clear' and 
easy to read. There is scarcely a dull or dry line in it.' ' 
Though nearly forty pages of print, we seem to read I 
it through in an instant. There are no wonderful { 

' Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches, vol. iv, p. 225. \ 

468 



ail 




Courtesy of the S. S. McCUire Company 



WEBSTER AT THE TIME OF THE 7TH OF MARCH SPEECH 
(From a Daguerreotype) 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

passages to quote like those of some of his former 
famous speeches. It is more the simphcity, the brevity 
and directness of an older man who has passed beyond 
the exuberances of youth. In this respect it is curi- 
ously like Clay's speech in support of the compromise. 
Both men used very much the same arguments; but 
Webster touched his with such fire of genius in expres- 
sion that they live and Clay's are forgotten. 

Everybody except the AboHtionists seems to have 
admitted that the deliver}^ of the speech was most re- 
markable and impressive. General Lyman, who was 
present, says that though Webster spoke for three 
hours, he never looked at his notes except to take from 
them copies of resolutions or quotations ; never hesitated 
for a word or a phrase, or changed the form of a sen- 
tence ; the speech rolled out like a mighty river. The 
audience as usual was spellbound into perfect stillness. 
" Xot a sound — not even the falling of a pin — broke the 
stillness between his sentences." 

The only conspicuous change noticeable in him seems 
to have been that his eyesight would no longer readily 
accommodate itself to short distances in reading quota- 
tions from books and papers or else he wanted to save 
his strength ; for he handed these quotations to Senator 
Greene, near him, A\'ho read them aloud to the audi- 
ence. Senator Hoar, in his autobiography, says that 
\\'ebster at this time of his life had become excessively 
slow and deliberate in speaking; and he mentions an- 
other instance in which his quotations were read for 
him. apparently. Hoar thinks, to husband his strength. 

There was an Indiana Abolitionist, a member of 
Congress, G. W. Julian, who says he was present at the 
Seventh of March Speech and that it was a failure in 
delivery as well as in other respects. 

" He not only spoke with very unusual deliberation, but 
with pauses having no relation whatever to the sense. His 
sentences were broken into the oddest fragments, and the 
hearer was perplexed in the endeavor to gather his meaning. 

469 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

In declaring, for example, that he ' would put in no Wilmot 
Proviso for the purpose of a taunt,' etc., he made a long pause 
at ' Wilmot,' perhaps half a minute, and, finally, having appa- 
rently recovered his breath, added the word ' proviso ' ; and 
then, after another considerable pause, went on with his sentence. 
His speaking seemed painfully laborious. Great drops of per- 
spiration stood upon his forehead and face, notwithstanding 
the slowness of his utterance, suggesting, as a possible explana- 
tion, a very recent and heavy dinner, or a greatly troubled 
conscience over his final act of apostasy from his early New 
England faith. The latter was probably the truth, since he is 
known to have long and seriously pondered the question of 
his ultimate decision ; and with his naturally great and noble 
traits of character he could not have announced it without 
manifest tokens of uneasiness." (G. W. Julian, Political Recol- 
lections, p. 86.) 

Although without the exuberantly eloquent passages 
of the Reply to Hayne, this speech is the most classic 
one Webster ever delivered, the most perfect in taste, 
the farthest removed from the spread-eagle oratory of 
his young days, which he regretted and of which, as we 
have seen, he was always trying to cure himself. The 
effort and the cure went steadily on until they culminated 
in this speech. In these respects it is the speech which, 
perhaps, places him closest to the older orators of the 
world. Even Whittier, who detested and attacked the 
arguments of the speech, admitted its beauty and power. 
" My admiration," he said, " of the personality and in- 
tellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger 
than when I laid down his speech, and in one of the 
saddest momvents of my life, penned my protest." 

The crowd had gathered that day, emptying the 
House of Representatives, filling the galleries and all 
the standing room in the Senate hall, and extending 
far out into the corridors, because they had heard that 
Webster was to speak. In fact, in anticipation of the 
event, people had been travelling to Washington from 
all over the country for several days. Chairs, sofas, 
temporary seats made of public documents piled one 
upon another, were crowded into every available corner. 

470 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

Senators guve up their seats to ladies and stood in the 
aisles. Senator Walker, of Wisconsin, and young Sew- 
ard, of New York, were entitled to the floor ; but seeing 
the enormous crowd, Senator Walker, when he rose to 
speak, said that such a vast audience had not come to 
hear him. There was but one man who could assemble 
such an audience and he and Seward yielded the floor 
to him. 

Seward, who thus yielded his privilege, had been 
Governor of New York, was an ardent young Free 
Soiler, and the same Seward wdio played such a dis- 
tinguished part in taking the country through the Civil 
War. In fact, the crowd that listened to Webster that 
day was a strange mixture of the men of the past and 
of the future, of intellect and statesmanship proved and 
tried, and of intellect and statesmanship that was to be. 

Calhoun dragged himself, from a sick-bed to hear 
Webster, and in a few mentfe was dead. Clay almost 
equally feeble was standing by his guns to the last. 
Two years afterwards he and Webster were both dead. 
Old Benton was also there, recently rejected by Alis- 
souri because he would not accept her instructions on 
slavery, and soon to disappear from the Senate. Those 
were of the past and a grand past they had made it. 

Listening to Webster either as Senators or members 
of the Lower House were Hale, of New Hampshire, 
and Bell, of Tennessee, both afterwards Presidential 
candidates. Tom Corwin and Salmon P. Chase, of 
Ohio, were also there to hear the speech. Jeffer- 
son Davis, of Mississippi ; Stephen A. Douglas, soon 
to become the rival of Lincoln ; Horace Mann, of Massa- 
chusetts ; Thaddeus Stevens and Josiah R. Giddings, 
of Pennsylvania; Robert Toombs, of Georgia, and 
Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, with a dozen or more 
others very prominent in the Civil War and now forgot- 
ten, sat there and listened. 

So the past and the future were listening with all 
their ears to this speech, which was a great landmark 

471 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of the time. The past was experienced, comprehensive, 
cautious, conservative. The future was enthusiastic, 
brilliant, reckless and daring'. 

Webster rose in his usual cool and indifferent way, 
passed his hand over his brow, surveyed his hearers 
with that master eye, thanked the gentlemen who had 
given him the floor, and then spoke that exordium 
which has always been considered so beautiful and 
which was quoted more in full in the second chapter. 

" I wish to speak to-day not as a Massachusetts man, nor 
as a northern man, but as an American and a member of the 
Senate of the United States. . . . The imprisoned winds 
are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South 
combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its 
billows to the sky, and disclose its profoundest depths. . . . 
I have a part to act, not for my own security, for I am looking 
out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, 
if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole, and the 
preservation of all ; and there is that which will keep me to 
my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the stars 
shall appear, or shall not appear for many days. I speak to-day 
for the preservation of the Union. ' Hear me for my cause.' 
I speak to-day out of a solicitous and anxious heart, for 
the restoration to the country of that quiet and that harmony, 
which make the blessings of this Union so rich and dear to 
us all." 

He had supposed, Lyman tells us, that he would not 
begin his speech until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 
and had intended to occupy the rest of the day until 
the usual hour of adjournment and finish the next morn- 
ing. But when Senator Walker gave him the floor 
so early, he decided to curtail his speech to what could 
be gone over that morning. By this arrangement he 
omitted several topics he intended to discuss ; and, in- 
deed, his speech impresses one as rather shorter than 
was his custom. 

When we come to analyze the speech we find that 
most of it is merely a very complete statement of the 
history of the subject already given ; and its accuracy 
has never been successfully assailed. As one of the 

472 



THE SEVENTH OF AlARCH SPEECH 

present g-eneration reads on and on, he wonders where 
are all the terrible crimes and offences of which the 
Abolitionists accused him. Tlieir charges when boiled 
down and stripped of their verbiage amounted to only 
three. He would not apply the Wilmot Proviso to 
new territory' incapable by its climate and geography 
of maintaining slavery. He would stand by the orig- 
inal Congressional pledge that four slave States might 
be made out of Texas if the people of such States 
wished for slavery. He would pass a more eft"ective 
fugitive slave law to fulfil the guaranty of the Con- 
stitution. 

On the first point he simply enlarged on the fact, 
A\hich remained a fact, that slavery was so unsuited to 
tlie deserts and mountains then called New Mexico, 
that it would never be established there. It was ex- 
cluded by " the law of nature," he said, " by physical 
geography, the law of the formation of the earth, 
riiat law settles forever, with a strength beyond all 
terms of human enactment, that slavery camiot exist 
in California and New Mexico." It is no more neces- 
sary to protect the deserts of New Mexico from slavery 
than it is necessary " to protect the everlasting- snows 
of Canada from the foot of slavery by the overspread- 
ing wing of an act of Congress." Why should anyone 
want " to reaffirm an ordinance of nature or to re- 
enact the will of God ? " 

" I would put in no Wilmot Proviso for the mere purpose 
of a taunt or a reproach. I would put into it no evidence of 
the votes of superior power exercised for no purpose but to 
wound the pride, whether a just and a rational pride or an 
irrational pride, of the citizens of the southern States." 

The Abolitionists attacked him heavily on this point. 
The Wilmot Proviso, absolute prohibition of slavery 
in the territory, was their test, their lineup to which 
every one mtist come. He was, they said, deliberately 
letting slavery into those reg-ions. SIaven>^ had existed 
there under Mexican rule ; it would go there again. 

473 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Although neither rice, cotton, sugar cane nor tobacco 
would grow there, yet slaves would be taken there to 
work the valuable mines ; it was the latitude of slavery ; 
southerners had boasted that slavery would be profit- 
able there; and Theodore Parker in his Faneuil Hall 
speech exhibited a printed advertisement circulated in 
Mississippi of a southern slave colony to- go to Cali- 
fornia. But the evidence on the other side was stronger. 
Mexico had found slavery of so little profit in those 
regions that she had had no difficulty in abolishing it ; 
travellers nearly all agreed in reporting the country 
unfit for slavery ; the representative of New Mexico 
at Washington said the region was unfit for slavery; 
as a matter of fact, California had prohibited slavery 
by her Constitution with southerners in her convention 
voting in favor of the prohibition, and within a little 
more than a month Webster was supported in all he 
had said by New Mexico, in accordance with her peti- 
tion, adopting of her own accord a constitution prohib- 
iting slavery. 

The bargain or compromise with the South on this 
point was a particularly fair one. The South had 
insisted that there should be a declaration that Con- 
gress had no power to prohibit slavery in the terri- 
tories, and that as the territories were the common 
property of the whole Union, southerners had the right 
to go there with their slaves. Violent speeches to this 
effect were constantly being made in Congress. Equally 
violent speeches were made by Free Soilers and Abo- 
litionists that Congress had the right to prohibit slavery 
in the territories; that it was a national disgrace not to 
do so; and that it must be done even if it split the 
Union in two. " Very well," said the southerners, " if you 
do it we will split the Union in two." Clay and Web- 
ster, therefore, said to the southerners, " If you will 
refrain from insisting on a declaration that Congress 
has no power over slavery in the territories, we will 
refrain from passing any Wilmot Provisos and will 

474 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

leave the question of slavery in the territories to be 
settled by those communities themselves in their own 
way, according to the principles of State rights doc- 
trine." 

As to the four slave States that might be admitted 
from Texas, Webster simply read the agreement be- 
tween Congress and Texas when Texas was admitted 
to the Union, that in consideration of Texas agreeing 
that any States formed out of her territory north of 
latitude 36° 30' should be free States, the Congress 
agreed that four slave States could be formed out of 
her territory south of that line if such States applying 
for admission wished to have slavery. 

That, said Webster, was a contract, a pledge, a 
solemn engagement ; passed in Congress by northern 
as well as by southern votes. Without the northern 
votes it could not have been passed ; and there was no 
way, all the Abolition seceders in the world to the. con- 
trary notwithstanding, "by which the government act- 
ing in good faith could relieve itself from that pledge 
by any honorable course of legislation whatever." 
Pledges of this sort had always been sacredly kept by 
both North and South for fifty years. 

His opponents professed to have a way of wriggling 
out of the pledge, and Theodore Parker and Seward set 
forth the metaphysics of it in a way which would have 
interested poor Calhoun if he had been well and strong 
enough to comprehend their subtlety. What they said 
was in effect that Congress was not really obliged to 
admit any States at all from Texas; the pledge did 
not say that Congress must admit such States. Con- 
gress could always exercise its right of rejecting a 
State ; could, in slang phrase, lie down and do nothing. 
No one, of course, denied this. But if Congress did 
decide to admit a State from Texas and the State 
offered itself with slavery. Congress, under the pledge, 
must admit it with slavery or reject it altogether. In 
short, the pledge was a pledge, and the objection of the 

475 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Abolitionists and Free Soilers to Webster was princi- 
pally that he had called attention to it, and frankly- 
admitted its force, instead of ignoring or minimizing- 
it, or wriggling out of it, as they were doing. Any 
modern person at all familiar with Webster's mental 
habits and methods who will take the trouble to read 
Parker's address and Seward's nth of March speech in 
the Senate will see at once that to expect Webster to 
take part in such wriggling was altogether out of the 
question. 

As to the necessity for a new fugitive slave law W^eb- 
ster simply recited in his expressive way the admitted 
facts of the subject, that the Constitution had guaran- 
teed slavery in the southern States, that it had guaran- 
teed that escaping slaves should be returned, that Con- 
gress had in 1793 passed a fugitive slave act, that the 
Supreme Court had held that it was the duty of the 
general government and not of the individual States to 
return fugitives, that the northern States would not 
assist in returning them, and, therefore, as the fugitive 
slave act of Congress of 1793 was not working satis- 
factorily a more efficient one should be passed to satisfy 
the requirements of the Constitution and of the South. 
That article of the Constitution was as binding in law, 
conscience and honor as any other article. His oppo- 
nents never denied that this position was sound in 
law and fact. They said, however, that it was disgrace- 
ful of him to say so and call attention to the unfor- 
tunate binding character of the Constitution in this 
respect when they had decided to ignore it and by 
agitation and aroused public feeling prevent the enforce- 
ment of that part of the Constitution and make it prac- 
tically impossible for any fugitive slave to be returned, 
at least from New England. 

The efifect of the speech was stupendoiis and almost 
equalled that of the Reply to Hayne. Indeed it has 
sometimes been said that it exceeded in its effects the 
Reply to Hayne. The conservatives all over the coun- 

476 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

try, including at that time a large majority of the 
people, were filled with the most unbounded admiration 
for it. " Letters," Webster writes, " come in thick 
! and all one way." They kept pouring in on him for 
I six months, and often twenty a day. The clamor 
for copies was incredible ; and " two hundred thousand," 
he said, " would not supply the demand." He appears 
to have kept printing them until he could afford the 
expense no longer, and had to leave it to be taken up 
by others.® 

Nevertheless, the Compromise measure hung fire 
for nearly seven months, was debated through the hot 
summer, and not finally passed in all the details of the 
various bills included in it by a combination of northern 
and southern. Whig and Democrat conservative votes 
until the 30th of September. Webster made several 
minor speeches in that time, urging the speedy passage 
of the measure so that the ordinary business of Con- 
gress, the appropriation bills and legislation absolutely 
essential for keeping the government alive, might be 
passed. 

In the midst of the worst part of the struggle in 
July President Taylor died. His death was a for- 
tunate circumstance for the compromise, because he 
and his immediate followers and friends had been 
opposed to the measure and would have continued to 
throw the weight of executive influence against it. 
President Taylor's plan was to admit California as a 
State with her free Constitution and do nothing about 
the New Mexican territory; leave it to become States 
hereafter. This would, he thought, avoid voting either 
way on the Wilmot Proviso : and if the Texans invaded 
New Mexico, to take possession of it for slavery, the 
United States troops would easily repulse them.^ That 
this bloodshed might precipitate a civil war with the 
South and cause secession and a dissolution of the 

Union he would not admit. ^ 

"Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 53.S, 567. 

^17 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The Vice-President, Mr, Fillmore, who now became 
President, was a conservative Whig, of the same opin- 
ions as Webster, friendly to the compromise, and he 
immediately made Webster his Secretary of State. 
The whole administration influence was now turned to 
the side oi compromise, and materially assisted in its 
final success. It was a hard struggle in Washington 
during that hot summer, beating off the " theoretic 
fanatical and fantastical Abolitionists," persuading the 
Union lovers of the South to unite with the Union 
lovers of the North and quieting the fiery southern 
disunionist as fanatical and fantastical as the northern 
abolition extremist at whom he was forever shaking 
his fist. Northern Abolitionists and Free Soilers and i 
southern disunionists, said Webster, " are the most 
reckless men, I think, I ever met with in public life." 
He was still a strong man to endure such work in i 
midsummer at sixty-eight years of age; twenty letters 
a day besides his official correspondence and seeing all 
sorts of politicians ; his eyes inflamed and weak with 
his annual depressing hay fever; and not unlikely the 
beginning of the final disease of the liver. " My general 
health is quite good," he writes, "or else I could not 
live under this load." ^ 

An important element in the final success, in Web- 
ster's opinion, was the election to Congress of Mr. 
Samuel Eliot, of Boston, to take the place of Mr. 
Robert Winthrop, who was to take the remainder of 
W^ebster's term in the Senate. Webster had stood so 
entirely alone among the Massachusetts representatives 
in Washington in his advocacy of the compromise, that 
most persons, he Says, thought that he had simply 
ruined himself wath his constituency and would no 
longer have any political standing. Prominent south- 
ern leaders, who wanted to avoid a crisis and have 
the compromise plan adopted, feared that the opposition i 



Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 566, 567. 

478 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

of Boston and Massachusetts would prevent the plan 
from, being carried out ; that Webster's influence alone 
would not be enough. The remarkable ability of the 
Abolitionists, as writers and orators, caused this mis- 
apprehension. They so filled the public eye and car 
with their arguments that people naturally believed 
that there was no one else in Massachusetts. But when 
it came to actual voting it was found that Samuel 
Eliot, the compromise candidate, overwhelmingly de- 
feated the Free Soil candidate, Charles Sumner. Eliot 
came to Washington outspoken and eloquent in favor 
of compromise, and the southern leaders, Webster tells 
us, at once became more hopeful of success and accepted 
the compromise. " From the commencement of the 
government," says Webster, " no such consequences 
have attended any single election as those that flowed 
from Mr. Eliot's election."^ 

The strong majority feeling in Massachusetts in 
favor of the compromise, in spite of the efforts of the 
Abolitionists to make appearances look the other way, 
is frankly admitted by Theodore Parker in a charac- 
teristic passage : 

" You know the indignation men felt, the sorrow, the an- 
guish. I think not a hundred prominent men in all New Eng- 
land acceded to the speech. But such was the power of that 
gigantic intellect, that eighteen days after his speech nine hun- 
dred and eighty-seven men of Boston sent him a letter, telling 
him that he had ' pointed out ' the path of duty, convinced the 
understanding and touched the conscience of a nation." (Dis- 
course on Death of Daniel Webster, p. 54.) 

Of those nine hundred and eighty-seven signers 
there were lawyers like Rufus Choate and B. R. Curtis, 
numerous men of business and commerce, and Pres- 
cott, the historian, almost the only one of the eminent 
literary men of Massachusetts who favored the compro- 

* Curtis, vol. ii, p. 474. Longfellow, a Free Soiler and 
Abolitionist, records Eliot at this time as a " dark disgrace " 
to Boston. (Longfellow, Journal, vol. ii, p. I77-) 

479 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

mise. From other neighboring towns there were simi- 
lar tokens of approval ; and in the country at large 
the approval was enormous and upheld the compromise 
for nearly a decade. In fact the Abolitionists and Free 
Soilers were bowled out by the speech of one man; 
and their historians hardly know what to say about it. 
On one page they say he stood alone in disgrace ; the 
whole North was against himi; and on the next page 
they complain that he had nearly ruined the cause of 
freedom, and rallied to the compromise all the Hunkers, 
rascals, conservatives and mossbacks of the whole 
country. 

So the great measure went slowly through its 
stages with its mission of peace, for awhile at least; 
and in the middle of September Webster reports " a 
great change in men's feelings here in favor of concilia- 
tion and harmony and peace. Men are a great deal 
happier than they were six months ago, and crimination 
and recrimination are no longer the order of the day." ® 

It was a great, a momentous event, the compromise 
of 1850; a wonderful instance of that peculiar talent of 
Henry Clay which was the genius and tact of the 
diplomatist, the shrewdness of the ordinary State poli- 
tician, the foresight of the statesman and the persuasive 
power of the orator. It is hard to conceive of anyone 
else at that time who could originate a plan which so 
skilfully played back and forth between violent con- 
flicting interests and who was at the same time so 
pre-eminently able tO' touch all the Congressional strings 
that were so important. Webster could advocate it in 
a speech which brought the country at large to its 
support and which drew attention to himself. But 
it is doubtful if Webster would have been willing to 
master the tiresome details by which Clay engineered 
it in Congress. 

The conservative people of both parties all over the 

* Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 567, 

43o 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

country, whose support and influence had carried the 
compromise, beheved in it because it was acceptable 
to the South, had stopped the spread of slavery and of 
the slave power for the time being, and had prevented 
civil war and a break-up of the Union. The status of 
all American territory with regard to slavery was now, 
they believed, fixed; and some were inclined to think 
permanently fixed (i) by the agreement annexing 
Texas which allowed four States to be admitted from 
that region south of the Missouri Compromise line of 
36° 30', with or without slavery, as the people of each 
State might desire; (2) by the admission of California 
as a free State and the organization of the territories 
of Utah and New ]\Iexico without any provision for or 
against slavery; (3) by the original Missouri Compro- 
mise forbidding slavery north of 36° 30' north latitude ; 
(4) by excluding the slave trade from the District of 
Columbia ; ( 5 ) by a new act for the return of fugitive 
slaves. 

Those who thought the compromise permanent were 
of course inistaken ; for the duration of the plan de- 
pended upon acts of Congress which might be repealed 
by any subsequent Congress. It was not an amendment 
to the Constitution. But it was as permanent as any- 
thing of the kind, any act of Congress could have been 
at that time. It was as permanent as anything the 
Free Soilers would have done ; for if they had applied 
their favorite Wilmot Proviso to the territories they 
would have done it by a mere act of Congress which 
might be repealed at any time. 

Webster believed that the compromise had put 
down disunion " at least for the present, and I hope 
for a long time." ^^ But even if he and Clay had 
<nown that the compromise would last only ten years, 
:hey would have gone on with it all the same. Under 
:he circumstances of the time temporary postponement 

"Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 568. 
31 481 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

of the crisis, even for the shortest time, was vitally 
important. 

As a matter of fact, the Missouri Compromise it- 
self, the most stable as was supposed of all, was some 
years afterwards repealed, and Kansas thrown open to 
competition for slavery, an event which had much to 
do with bringing on the Civil War. The Clay Compro- 
mise of 1850 was admittedly a stop-gap, a desperate 
measure in a dangerous crisis, and must be judged by 
its own peculiar circumstances. The Free Soilers de- 
nounced it in 1850. But ten years afterwards when 
they had become more matured in politics they at- 
tempted an almost exactly similar compromise with the 
South in order to stop the outbreak of the Civil War. 

There are three important points to remember: 

First, Was the North ready for a civil war in 1850, 
and could it then have conquered the South, saved the 
Union, and abolished slavery? Ten years later, with 
the North stronger in population and wealth, the South 
weaker, and the Republican party organized to save 
the Union and in possession of the government, the re- 
sult of actual civil war was long doubtful. The north- 
ern Democrats were willing that the South should peace- 
fully secede ; the Abolitionists were of the same mind ; 
General Scott, the head of the army, was drawing up 
plans for dividing the country into several independent 
confederacies. What would have been the result in 
1850 with these elements of dissolution stronger and 
the forces for Union weaker than in 1861 ? If you say 
that the North under those circumstances of 1850 
could not have performed the triple task of conquering 
the South, saving the Union and abolishing slavery, 
then the Clay Compromise was a wise policy ; and that 
was the answer of the conservatives. 

Second, Would it have been better tO' have forced 
the issue, scorned a compromise with slavery, incensed 
southern feeling by declaring slavery prohibited in allij 
new territory in the faith that the South had no real 

482 



H 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

intention of rebelling or seceding, and that there would 
be no civil war? If you say yes, then the Clay Com- 
promise was a mistake ; and this was the answer of the 
Free Soilers and Abolitionists who denounced Webster's 
course. 

Third, Would it have been better to have forced the 
issue, scorned a compromise with slavery, offended the 
South by declaring slavery prohibited in all new terri- 
tory, and welcome rebellion by the South, civil war and 
an attempt to break up the Union in the faith that in the 
confusion and contest freedom at least would triumph 
and slavery be abolished, although the Union might 
be broken up and the Constitution destroyed? If you 
say yes, then the Clay Compromise was a mistake; and 
this was the answer of the extreme Abolitionists who 
denounced Webster's course. 

Webster had effected a combination of conservative 
Whigs and conservative Democrats in both the South 
and the North. His strength, and at times, in a sense, 
his weakness, in politics had always been his inde- 
pendence ; his indifference to strict partv requirements. 
So now in combining Democrats w^ith Whigs, his ene- 
mies said that he was merely making a bid for the 
Presidency from his overweening ambition for that 
office. If that were his motive he chose a poor way 
to carry it out. No man can attain the Presidency, 
or even a nomination for it, by going half-way into the 
enemy's camp. The Democrats would not nominate 
him because he was not of their faith ; and the Whigs 
would not nominate him because half the party regarded 
him as a renegade. In the next Whig nominating con- 
vention he did not get a single southern Whig vote 
in 53 ballots, although it was for these southern votes, 
the Abolitionists said, that he had made his Seventh of 
March speech. 

One of the first instances of approval he received, 
and not very creditable to his financial reputation, was 
,ji letter from Mr. W. W. Corcoran, of Washington, 

483 



m \ 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

cancelling a note Webster had given for money bor- 
rowed from him, and in addition making Webster a 
present of money. Cancelled note and present 
amounted to about $7000. This was done out of ad- 
miration for the Seventh of March speech. Webster 
accepted, in a letter of thanks, both the release of the 
debt and the present." 

As soon as the violent anti-slavery people had re- 
covered a little from their surprise, they poured out a 
flood of denunciation upon Webster, and held meetings 
for the purpose. The Constitution was, they said, the 
cause of all the evil. It was not in any danger. Would 
that it were! The southern slave-holders knew and 
valued it. There was not the slightest danger of their 
rebelling or breaking up the Union. They would hold 
tight to the Constitution because it protected their 
property. If they left the Union they would lose all 
their slaves and they would immediately come back 
again. 

"The southern men," said Parker, "know well, that if 
the Union were dissolved, their riches would take to itself 
legs and run away, — or firebrands, and make a St. Domingo out 
of California! They cast ofif the North! They set up for 
themselves ! Tush ! tush ! Fear boys with bugs." (Discourse 
on Death of Webster, p. 63.) 

James Russell Lowell, then a young Free Soil politi- 
cal writer, had for some time been assailing Webster 
as a statesman who had communicated no impulse to 
any of the great ideas of the century, as a statesman 
whose soul had been absorbed in tariff, banks and Con- 
stitution instead of devoting himself to the freedom 
of the future and of a down-trodden race. When it 
came, however, to telling exactly what Webster should 
have done or should do, he was like all the Free Soilers 
and Abolitionists, a trifle vague, and had to fall back on 
spread-eagle oratory. Webster, he said, should be "a 

"Lodge, Life of Webster, p. 357, note. 

484 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

conductor to gather from every part of the cloud of 
popular indignation the scattered electricity, which 
would waste itself in heat lightning-, and, grasping it 
in one huge thunderbolt, let it fall like the messenger 
of an angry god among the triflers in the capitol." ^- 

Longfellow on reading the 7th of March speech en- 
tered in his diary, " Is it possible ? Is this the Titan 
who hurled mountains at Hayne years ago? . . . 
Fallen, fallen, fallen from his high estate is tlie univer- 
sal cry in various phraseology. Yet what has there 
been in Webster's life to lead us to think that he would 
take high moral ground on tliis slavery question?" 
Charles Sumner, then a brilliant young man, a great 
friend of Longfellow, often walking out to Cambridge 
to dine with him, but banished, because he was a Free 
Soiler, from the fashionable life of Boston, in which 
he had fonnerly moved with so much distinction, also 
joined in the chorus against Webster, feeling sadly, 
Longfellow says, about the speech. Emerson, who was 
then dipping into politics and on the stump so far as 
was possible for a philosopher, also took his fling at 
Webster. " Every drop of blood in that man's veins," 
he said, " has eyes that look downward." " 

They attacked him as if he were approving of 
slavery, which he certainly was not doing. They dis- 
torted passages. The passage, for example, where he 
speaks of the New Testament as nowhere prohibiting 
slavery, they use as if he were advocating slavery. But 
he was merely reviewing the history of slavery in the 
past, and stating the facts, the unfortunate facts that 
had put slavery in the Constitution and brought us to a 
crisis of such diffictilty and danger. 

Whittier's poem calling him, in the old Scripture 
phrase, Ichabod, " Where is the glory, for the glory 
hath departed from Israel," described the New England 



^ Scudder, Life of Lowell, vol. i, pp. 227, 233. 
"Longfellow's Diary, vol. ii, pp. 162, 181, 195. 

485 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

literary feeling of this ignominious fall of the mighty 
one as it was supposed to be. 

" So fallen ! So lost ! the light withdrawn 
Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 
Forevermore ! 

" Revile him not — the Tempter hath 
A snare for all. 
And pitying, not scorn and wrath, 
Befit his fall ! 

" Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 
When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age 
Falls back in night. 
• •...., 

" Let not the land once proud of him 
Insult him now. 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim 
Dishonored brow." 



Beautiful verse it is ; terrible it was called at the 
time ; probably as fine a specimen of scorn as can be 
found in the language. 

" I saw as I wrote," said Whittier, " with painful clearness 
its (the speech's) sure results, — the Slave Power arrogant 
and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its 
scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolu- 
tion of the Union, the guarantees of personal liberty in the 
free States broken down, and the whole country made the 
hunting ground of slave catchers. In the horror of such a 
vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke at all, he could 
only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful rebuke." (Car- 
penter's Whittier, pp. 220, 221.) 

In 1880, when Webster had been in his grave at 
Marshfield by the sea for nearly thirty years, Whittier 
wrote a longer poem called " The Lost Occasion." Less 
denunciatory than Ichabod, it takes at some length the 
ground that the great orator missed a golden oppor- 
tunity. 

486 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

"Ah, cruel Fate that closed to thee, 
Oh, sleeper by the northern sea, 
The gates of opportunity." 

What the opportunity was is left poetically vague. 
But apparently the sleeper should have insisted on 
expressly prohibiting slavery in a region where it could 
not exist, merely as an insult to the South ; should have 
declared that the pledge about Texas should not be kept, 
and should have refused to pass any law or assist in any 
way the return of fugitive slaves as guaranteed by the 
Constitution — in short, should have violated and re- 
pudiated all his past, stultified his intelligence, and 
gone in for a general smash-up in civil war in the vague 
hope that, whatever else might be ruined, the everlast- 
ing- African would emerge from the confusion a free 
man. 

In the closing verses the poet softens a little and 
concludes that after all, when the Civil War really did 
come in 1861. the sleeper would have been willing to 
take chances in that smash-up. 

" Wise men and strong we did not lack ; 
But still with memory turning back, 
In the dark hours we thought of thee, 
And thy lone grave beside the sea." 

That, no doubt, was true. Webster would, of 
course, have been for the Union in 1861. His son 
Fletcher went to the war as colonel of the Twelfth 
Massachusetts and was killed at the Battle of Manassas. 

One of the poet's biographers reports that " those 
whom Whittier knew best in later life relate that he 
came eventually to feel that Webster was perhaps right, 
and he wrong; that compromise meant weary years of 
waiting, but that the further and consistent pursuit of 
such a policy might have successfully avoided the evils 
of war and of reconstruction." 

Webster's literary power, his unrivalled command 
of the aptest language for oratory, debate and law, 

487 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

were, as we have seen, a part of that remarkable literary 
movement in New England to which the Longfellows 
and Whittiers belonged. But Webster never seems 
to have associated familiarly with any of these people. 
He apparently had hardly more than a bowing acquaint- 
ance with them. There are no familiar letters between 
him and them, and such letters would surely have been 
both remarkable and valuable. 

His familiar associates seem always to have been 
of a totally different set; the lawyers, the poHticians, 
the rich merchants and manufacturers ; and now for 
some time, as Senator Lodge expresses it, he had fallen 
into bad hands, which, being interpreted, means that 
he had joined the conservative Whigs instead of the 
radical Whigs. His old friend Jeremiah Mason was 
dead. Mr. Peter Harvey, of Boston; Mr. Franklin 
Haven, sub-treasurer at Boston; Mr. Edward Curtis, 
Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, Mr. Hiram Ketchum and 
Mr. Richard Blatchford, of New York; Samuel Law- 
rence, the Appletons, James K. Mills, Samuel Eliot, 
Mr. Fearing, and no doubt also many of the forty who 
had subscribed his pension, were among his intimates. 
With Mr. Blatchford he was very intimate, and som.e- 
times wrote to him every day. Mr. Edward Curtis, of 
New York, was one of his most confidential advisers in 
politics, as Thurlow Weed tells us in bis memoirs. Mr. 
Peter Harvey and Mr, Edward Curtis were with him 
the night before the 7th of March speech, and he 
consulted with them about it and declared his resolution, 
as he put it, " to push my skiff from the shore alone." ^* 
There were Abolitionists in the country who were 
not as refined in their methods as those of New Eng- 
land, and among these it seemed proper enough to 
" kill off " Webster and ruin his influence on the side of 
compromise by means of the ancient method of scan- 
dals with women. From the year 1850 date those 
charges that he was a gross and unscrupulous libertine, 

" Curtis, vol. ii, p. 474. 

488 



I 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

and these have been repeated and turned into universal 
tradition which both Von Hoist and Mr. Rhodes put 
into their histories of the United States, and anyone 
who even doubts whether the offences were quite as 
bad as represented is laughed at for his lack of knowl- 
edge of the world. 

They were made public, as we learn from Mr. 
Wilkinson's excellent volume, by the efforts of a Mrs. 
Swisshelm, a newspaper correspondent in Washington 
and an Abolitionist. She herself has said that up tO' the 
time of the 7th of March speech, " in all the rough 
and tumble of political strife, I had never heard his 
private character assailed." Suddenly she learns of 
his low debauchery, and from whom? From the Abo- 
litionists, if you please, and by them she is urged to 
put it in the newspapers. She wrote an article on the 
subject which was circulated with zealous eagerness 
by the Abolitionists and equally circulated by the Whig 
press, which denied its assertions. Her agency in the 
matter was well known, and it became a standing conun- 
drum among Free Soilers : " Why is Daniel Webster 
like Sisera? Because he was killed by a woman." At 
a Free Soil meeting in Pittsburg, Henry Wilson, the 
chairman, came down from the platform to be intro- 
duced to her and " take the hand of the woman who 
killed Daniel Webster." 

Of names, dates, places, details, evidence, proof, 
there is absolutely none. There never is in a sacred 
tradition. No one ever succeeded in substantiating 
anything. Many years before there had been some 
talk about two English people, a man and his wife, of 
cultivated minds, who lived in the same apartment 
house with Webster in Washington. Webster was 
fond of talking with them both; and as politics were 
rough there was a tale circulated in Washington which 
was abundantly disproved. No attention was paid to 
it in Boston, where the lady was received among Web- 
ster's friends, and perfectly innocent letters from her 

489 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and her husband were found among Webster's papers 
after his death. He was also intimate with Mr. and 
Mrs. Blake. They were often at his house ; he wrote 
numerous letters to Mrs. Blake which can be read in 
his works. He was fond of bright women who read 
and improved their minds. He was a good deal of a 
ladies' man in general society ; went out of his way 
to amuse them with jokes and raillery ; and some years 
ago there were not a few elderly ladies still alive who 
treasured compliments he had paid them. It is said that 
there were quite a number, each of whom insisted that 
to her alone had he applied the line from Horace about 
the beautiful daughter of a still more beautiful mother. 
His intimacy with Mr. and Mrs. Ticlcnor was very 
much the same in the way of letters and friendliness as 
that with the Blakes. The malicious could have used 
one instance as well as any of the others. There seems 
to have been absolutely nothing that anyone regarded 
until the sudden Swisshelm discovery in 1850, when 
Webster was sixty-eight years old. 

But the Abolitionists were disappointed even in 
that wonderful discovery ; for it sometimes takes more 
than one irresponsible woman to kill a statesman. They 
professed to believe that he would soon apologize for 
his 7th of March speech or attempt to qualify or 
explain it away. As the apology did not come, they 
insisted that nevertheless he was conscience-stricken 
and ashamed and merely succeeded in keeping up ap- 
pearances ; and their historians keep repeating these 
assertions. He never, however, wavered from his posi- 
tion for an instant, but went on advocating the compro- 
mise and insisting that it must be carried out to the letter. 

"We shall have a fight, with the Abolitionists under the 
lead, I fear, of Mr. Seward ; and a fight, too, with the violent 
party of the South under the lead of Mr. Calhoun. But I shall 
stand on the principle of my speech to the end ; and we shall 
beat them, and the Union party will triumph. ... If neces- 
sary I will take the stump in every village in New England." 
(Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 5370 

490 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

He visited Boston soon after the 7th of March 
speech, and if the radicals expected him to be treated 
with marked disrespect they were again disappointed. 
He was received with the old respect due to his charac- 
ter and to a Senator of the United States. But he told 
tliem plainly that they need expect no backward steps 
from him. 

For a year and a half afterwards he made the great- 
est exertions to help the Compromise party. He went 
to Virginia, and in a speech at Capon Springs told the 
southerners that the Constitution guaranteed the exist- 
ence of slavery in the old southern States, that they 
were constitutionally entitled to have their fugitive 
slaves returned, and he even went so far as to say 
that if the North violated the Constitution in that par- 
ticular they could not complain if the South left the 
Union. 

He made speeches all over the eastern part of the 
country — at New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, 
and the towns of northern New York — and wrote in- 
numerable letters. He even spoke in Syracuse, " that 
laboratory of Abolitionism, libel and treason," as he 
called it. This Syracuse speech, recently published in 
the National Edition of his works, is, as an address 
to a very hostile community, a model of tact, good 
humor, and forcefulness. He brought out strongly the 
point that the adoption by New Mexico of a constitu- 
tion prohibiting slavery was another proof of the use- 
lessness of offending the South by applying the Wilmot 
Proviso to all that region. He argued in all these 
speeches that without the compromise there would have 
been a civil war, that six or seven southern States were 
preparing to secede, and that Texas, claiming the whole 
of New Mexico, would have marched troops into it 
and precipitated the first bloodshed if her boundaries 
had not been settled by the compromise. 

His efforts in all this work were far greater than he 
had put in the 7th of March speech. He described him^ 

491 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

self at the end as talked out and written out and without 
a fresh idea left. It was heavy work for a man sixty- 
nine years old and no longer well. Other prominent 
men, believers in the compromise, were doing the same. 
President Fillmore made a tour of speeches for the 
compromise in northern New York; and the object of 
all these conservative statesmen was to bring the people 
to such a state of mind that they would respect the 
compromise and prevent its repeal or a breach of it. 
At the end of two years they considered their work 
largely accomplished, civil war prevented, old sores 
somewhat healed, and the compromise in no danger of 
immediate dissolution. This work was temporary in its 
results, of course, but to accuse these men of bad faith, 
treachery to the cause of freedom, or contemptible 
motives, as the extremists have done, is too much like 
stupidity and narrowness. 

Meantime, the radicals were preaching sermons and 
passing resolutions that " Constitution or no Consti- 
tution, law or no law, we will not allow a fugitive slave 
to be taken from Massachusetts ; " and soon the Boston 
mob broke into the United States Court House and 
rescued an alleged fugitive slave from the custody 
of an officer. But the final efifect of all this sort of 
thing belongs to a period after Webster's death. 

The new fugitive slave act of Congress passed in 
fulfilment of the Clay compromise, and to carry out the 
provision on that subject in the Constitution, was not 
a good one. Webster tried to have it provide for trial 
by jury, but failed. The absence of trial by jury, the 
provision which prohibited the supposed runaway from 
testifying, and other provisions in favor of the man- 
hunter, gave the Abolitionists a handle against it. It 
was the weak part of the compromise. They said it 
could be used to kidnap persons who had never been 
slaves. If the law had been made a little more in favor 
of the fugitive and less in favor of the hunter it would 
have been a great help to the compromise. But the 

492 



THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

compromisers had to accept it as it was and enforce it. 
Any fugitive slave law is necessarily odious and detest- 
able, no matter how " good " it may be made. Instances 
of the reclamation of slaves, which had been compara- 
tively rare in the whole previous history of the country, 
now became more numerous, and the knowledge of them 
made converts tO' Abolitionism and Free Soil doctrines 
and to semi-Abolitionism and semi-Free Soil doctrines, 
and all the shades of opinion that were building up the 
party that carried through the Civil War. In the next 
few years this new fugitive slave law is believed to 
have done more to build up the Abolitionists than any 
other one cause that can be named. Webster and 
the conservatives, however, insisted that having been 
passed in good faith as part of the compromise and 
agreement with the South, it must be enforced. This 
was an unfortunate predicament for them ; and in the 
next Presidential election of 1852, the Whig party 
in attempting to uphold this fugitive slave law went to 
pieces, and passed into history. Slavery being in the 
Constitution, nothing but a war would take it out. 

The differences between the parties at this time 
seem now somewhat slender, although at the tirme they 
were deemed very essential. Charles Sumner, for ex- 
ample, a Free Soiler. declared himself " a Unionist and 
a Constitutionalist," that he would stay within the 
Constitution and within the law. This would seem to 
differentiate him from the Abolitionists ; but at the 
same time he made speeches which he admitted were 
intended to " create a public sentiment which would 
render the enforcement of the fugitive slave law impos- 
sible." ^^ Except in form there was little difference 
between him and the Abolitionists who consigned the 
Constitution to hell. 

Sumner was now elected to the Senate in Webster's 
place by an unexpected fusion of Free Soilers and 
regulation Democrats in the Massachusetts Legislature. 

"'Life of Sumner, pp. 102, 128. 

493 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats in New Hampshire 
sent another radical Senator, John Hale, to Washing- 
ton; and the Free Soilers and Democrats sent Salmon 
P. Chase to the Senate. 

Webster, it seems, had broken off from the Whig State 
Committee of Massachusetts and would no longer leave 
his interests in their hands. They were too stronglv 
Abolitionist, he thought, and had separated themselves 
from the cause of the Union as well as from the other 
Whigs of the country. They had opposed national 
settlement and national harmony, and had courted 
Abolitionists until the Abolitionists would soon 
become their masters. " The Union Whigs, Tariff 
Whigs, Internal Improvement Whigs and Constitu- 
tional Whigs," he writes, " are afraid, all over the 
South, to connect themselves with us, because they say 
that on the question of all others, the most important 
to them, they have as little, indeed less tO' expect from 
Massachusetts Whigs, than from Massachusetts Demo- 
crats." He recommended calling a meeting of Union 
men of all parties in Massachusetts.^® 

Sumner, who had so quickly stepped into Webster's 
place to undo his work as soon as possible, was in 
argumentative ability and oratory well worthy of the 
position. Powerful looking and handsome ; full of emo- 
tion and sentiment; like Webster, a lover of literature 
and knowledge ; a man of refined taste and of the 
world ; he, nevertheless, had none of Webster's personal 
attractiveness. He had no love of nature, of farms, 
of the ocean and boats, of sport, of animals, of chil- 
dren and women, and all that many-sidedness which 
had broadened Webster and given him such a power- 
ful hold on life and statesmanship. Worst of all, 
Sumner lacked Webster's genial sense of humor. That 
alone might have saved him from the narrow mistakes, 
crabbed views, and tactless animosities of his later years, 
especially in the reconstruction period. 

"Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 6ii, 613, 614. 

494 



XIX 

LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

As Secretary of State at this time there was no 
remarkable diplomatic work for Webster to do. The 
office involved not a little entertaining and the keeping 
up of a certain style for which he was too poor ; and 
again he was assisted by his friends, who subscribed 
a few thousand dollars for his extraordinary expenses.^ 

His son Fletcher, now his only surviving child, had 
grown to manhood, had looked after property and 
farms in the West, had been secretary of the legation to 
China in 1843 under Caleb Cushing, a member of the 
Massachusetts Legislature in 1847, a sort of secretary 
and assistant to his father in the Department of State, 
and was now surveyor of the port of Boston. The 
fourth volume of the edition of the father's works, 
published in 1851, is dedicated to Fletcher, and several 
of the diplomatic papers are described in this dedication 
as " written wholly or mainly " by him. He was no 
doubt a source of no little comfort and satisfaction to his 
parent. He rather inclined to be a Free Soiler; and 
Senator Hoar says attended the convention which 
founded the Free Soil party in Massachusetts. Though 
without the genius of his father, he might but for his 
early death in the Civil War have become a very 
prominent man. 

Though a man now of almost seventy, Webster 
is described in this spring of 185 1 as in the almost 
daily habit of rising at four in the morning, and, accom- 
panied only by his private secretary, going fishing at 
the Little Falls of the Potomac and returning before the 
offices of the State Department were open, so as to 



^ Curtis, vol. ii, p. 496. 

495 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

lose no time at his duties. He found, it seems, that 
this method of fresh air and exercise invigorated him; 
and we are reminded of John Quincy Adams's habit in 
his old age of bathing in the Potomac early in the 
morning.^ 

It was at this time that Webster's health began to 
fail. The long summer with the compromise in the 
heat of Washington had been very severe. He en- 
dured it at the time and thought himself stronger ; but 
when the excitement had passed he began to break 
down. His annual hay fever had become more than 
an inconvenience. It was an exhausting disease which 
prostrated him and prevented the use of his eyes. That 
October at Marshfield he described his health as miser- 
able. He was " hardly able," he said, " to drive round 
the farm more than twice." This was indeed a changed 
Webster. The chronic diarrhoea he had had for many 
years continued to trouble him. He went to the Elms 
Farm in New Hampshire and was much improved bv 
the mountain air and his old pleasures of roaming 
through the hills and sitting by " glorious chip fires " 
in the evening. In the next summer, 1851, dreading 
the onset of the hay fever, he used most violent remedies 
in considerable quantities, and much to his surprise, 
the disease was kept ofif during most of the season. 
But the remedies were nearly as bad as the disease, if 
not worse, and his Boston doctor finally persuaded him 
to stop them. It was supposed afterwards that the 
hay fever had been stopped, not by the remedies, but 
by the increase of a worse malady, cirrhosis of the liver, 
of which he finally died. 

That disease is often the result of overindulgence 
in stimulants ; but the physicians say is also brought 
on by other conditions and causes. There was a great 
deal of discussion in Webster's lifetime, and after his 
death, as to his habits in this respect. Parton, in his 
" Famous Americans," professes to have seen him pre- 

" Lanman, Private Life of Webster, pp. 99, 100. 

496 




DAGUERREOlAPh Vi WEBSTER 
In the possession of Dartmouth College 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

siding at a banquet with two bottles of Madeira under 
his buff waistcoat and applauding every reference to 
the clergy and religion. He also saw him, he says, 
address an audience " in a state not far removed from 
intoxication, and mumble incoherence for ten minutes." 
Parker says " he became overfond of animal delights, 
of the joys of the body's baser parts; fond of sensual 
luxury, the victim of low appetites. He loved power, 
loved pleasure, loved wine. Let me turn off my face 
and say no more of this sad theme. Others were as 
bad as he." ^ 

Edward Everett, on the other hand, said in his 
eulogy, in response to a supposed question on these 
points, that no one but an angel had a right to ask such 
a question and no one but a Pharisee would; and he 
reminds us that there are spots on the sun.'* Edward 
Everett Hale, who from boyhood was often at Web- 
ster's house, denies the intemperance as preposterous, 
and in his " Memories of a Hundred Years " says that in 
twenty-six years' knowledge of him he never heard of 
any intemperance ; that he was greatly astonished when 
he found in later years the impression growing up in 
the country that Webster " was often, not to say gener- 
ally, overcome with liquor ; " and that his father, who 
survived to 1864 and knew Webster intimately, always 
denied these stories with disgust and indignation. 

I have a letter from Mr. S. Arthur Bent, of Boston, 
familiar with the Webster family and the times, who 
says that he was informed by an old resident near 
Marshfield that " never in the course of his long life 
had he ever heard one citizen of Marshfield allude to 
Mr. Webster's habits as being what they were called 
elsewhere." The testimony of Seth Weston, of Marsli- 

p 'Famous Americans, pp. 105, 106; Theodore Parker, Dis- 
course on Death of Webster, p. 95. See also several passages 
in Ben Perley Poore's Reminiscences. 

* Everett, Speeches and Orations, vol. iii, p. 408; Webster 
Centennial at Dartmouth, p. 265. 

32 497 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

field, quoted in Mr. Wilkinson's book, is to the same 
effect. In the long years of his acquaintance he had 
never known Webster " at all under the influence of 
liquor, excepting on one solitary occasion. And on 
that one occasion he was far from being intoxicated; 
he seemed to- be a little flushed or exhilarated — that 
was all." 

The testimony of Webster's physician. Dr. Jeffries, 
should also be quoted : 

" I admit that Mr. Webster was in the occasional use of 
wine, and sometimes of other alcoholic drinks, and gave as a 
probable reason that it was much more the custom in Wash- 
ington than in this city; but I confidently express the opinion 
that no man can be produced who can show that he knows — 
although many may erroneously presume, as in the instance 
above referred to — that his great intellect was ever clouded by 
stimulants ; or that he was unfitted at any time, even for the 
production of State papers." (Harvey, Reminiscences, p. 445.) 

Europeans would be greatly amused at all this detail 
and pains about a man's drinking and whether he was 
flitshed or exhilarated. They are always surprised at 
our winks, innuendoes and suspicions whenever drinking 
is mentioned. To be gay, exhilarated and lively from 
wine is to them the most natural thing in the world and 
no harm. We always take these things very seriously, 
sometimes fanatically, in America, and probably it is 
necessary in our climate. 

Readers of Campbell's lives of the Chief Justices 
and Lord Chancellors of England will remember his 
descriptions of some of those worthies as two-bottle or 
three-bottle men, according to the quantity of which 
they were capable with impunity at a sitting; and this 
we usually regard as one of the pleasantries of litera- 
ture. Lord Stowell, for instance, was a two-bottle man. 
His brother said of him, he will drink any given quan- 
tity of port ; and " despite his excesses, his bodily health 
remained good until he was nearly ninety."^ Those 



Dictionary of National Biography, vol. li, p. iii. 

498 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

gentlemen of the old school had strong livers. Web- 
ster's favorite drink, they say, was brandy ; a powerful 
drug, fit only, Dr. Johnson said, for heroes. There was 
also a famous American Chief Justice of good deci- 
sions, unclouded brain, and genial humor who lived to 
be eighty-five and seldom took less tlian a quart of 
whiskey a day; and President Lincoln, as we all know, 
wanted to send to every general in the army a barrel 
of the kind said to be used by one of them. 

But the point with Webster is that, among us 
Americans who cannot be kept within bounds on this 
subject, he is charged both in print and in tradition with 
being a perfect sot, drunk on important occasions, 
drunk most of the time, making some of his most 
famous speeches when dnmk, and incapable of making 
a good speech unless he was drunk. In fact, as Edward 
Everett Hale puts it, " a third part of the anecdotes of 
him which you find afloat have reference to occasions 
when it was supposed that, under the influence of 
whiskey, he did not know what he was doing." After 
telling a Webster story, the raconteur is apt to add, 
" He was drunk, of course." He feels that unless he 
says that it will be supposed that he does not understand 
these things. 

There was also another habit into which people 
seem to have drifted. His speeches had immense in- 
fluence; political speeches had more influence in that day 
than in ours ; and it was discovered that a good way 
to offset Webster's was to say, " Oh, he was drunk ; " 
or better still, " A fine speech, a fine speech ; but he was 
drunk." There is the story of the political opponent 
who was seen coming away early from one of his 
speeches. 

" Why are you coming away so soon ? " 
" Oh, I am disgusted. Webster is drunk." 
He was no doubt disgusted, but it was at something 
that annoved him more than drink. 

Mr. Wilkinson shows that in those instances where 

499 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

a responsible or important person was reported to have 
said that he had seen Webster drunk in pubHc or making 
a " fine speech " when drunk, the said important person 
when interviewed denied it and said that it had 
been reported to him that So-and-so had seen 
the sad occurrence. So of the story that Webster 
in speaking at a pubHc banquet had fallen drunk into 
the arms of the Mayor of Rochester, the Mayor, 
when asked about it, said that there was no truth in it; 
that Mr. Webster in offering a toast to the city had 
merely laid both his hands on the Mayor's shoulders. 

Alexander H. Stephens, afterwards Vice-President 
of the Southern Confederacy, lived next door to Web- 
ster in Washington, knew him intimately for six years, 
and declared that " the impression in the country that he 
was a great drunkard " was " an outrageous slander.'' 
He had never seen him " in the least inebriated." But 
then he adds, as so many of them were apt to do, 
that he had heard of his being intoxicated twice, " and 
on one of those occasions — a dinner — he made a speech 
that was grandly eloquent." 

Tbere it is again. Somebody else, not the witness 
himself, sees it ; and when thus drunk he always makes 
a wonderful speech. But we cannot go on with these 
instances which are given in full detail by Mr. Wilkin- 
son. Those who believe that drunken men can make 
highly intellectual speeches must be left to the pleasures 
of their own credulity. Suffice it to say that the news- 
paper tale, repeated by Poore in his Reminiscences, that 
Webster, in dying, called for drink with his last breath, 
is nonsense, unsupported by any evidence and positively 
denied by Mr. Curtis, who was present at his death. 

There is no doubt that Webster was fond of drink- 
ing, drank with the Senators at Washington, and with 
his friends, drank brandy with sugar under the advice 
of the physicians of that time for an annoying intestinal 
tendency, drank at banquets and public dinners liber- 
ally, was fond of his two glasses of Madeira at dinner at 
home, and no doubt in these ways seriously injured his 

500 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

health and iron constitution, as is easily done in our 
climate. But he was no more an intemperate man than 
hundreds of others of his time against whom no such 
charge has ever been made ; there is not the slightest 
evidence that his wonderfully poised intellectual power 
was impaired at all up to the time of his death when past 
seventy. Six months before his death he tried and won 
the Goodyear Rubber suit, a difficult case of many days' 
trial, the most prominent litigation of its time ; and that 
he was a common drunkard or frequently or often drunk 
or that he made speeches when drunk is not supported 
by any respectable evidence. 

During the summers of 185 1 and 1852 he sought 
strength in the only two places he had ever been able 
to find it, Marshfield and The Elms. The change to 
the mountain region of The Elms was, he thought, 
at times decidedly beneficial. It was sad to see him 
struggling to regain his old pleasures and life in these, 
to him, earthly paradises. Besides disease, he had to 
fight away the guests, conservative Whigs and compro- 
mise Democrats in swarms, that came to see and con- 
gratulate him on the success of the great measure of 
1850. The Elms was the worst place for them because 
there was a railroad station close to the house. To 
avoid them he would take his horse and wagon, start 
early, and drive far into the foothills, or put his farmer, 
John Taylor, on guard to keep them off. He even 
tried living a little distance from The Elms. Distinc- 
tion was torturing him. But still there were some of 
the old delights. " Tlie foliage indescribably beautiful," 
he writes from The Elms, October 21st, 1850, "John 
Taylor, straight up. Henry and I his only guests, and 
three glorious chip-fires already burning. Can you 
resist that?"« 

Apparently, the failure of his health had begun sooner 
than necessary. He was barely seventy, and had 
seemed made to last a hundred. With such unusual 



' Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, p. 572. 

SOI 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

vigor as he had shown in the rest of his Hfe, he should 
have been free from serious decay until seventy-five, and 
was entitled to five years more of comparatively com- 
fortable old age. But the too liberal habits of the 
Senate and Washington were cutting him down before 
his time. 

As Secretary of State he had at this time no momen- 
tous questions to settle like the Ashburton Treaty, which 
had added so largely to his own fame and to the ad- 
vancement of international peace when he had been 
head of the State Department under President Tyler 
in 1842. A settlement with England in regard to her 
protectorate in Central America, where a ship canal 
between the Atlantic and Pacific was proposed, a nego- 
tiation with Mexico about a railroad across the Isthmus 
of Tehuantepec, the rebellion in Cuba, and the libera- 
tion of the Hungarian patriot Kossuth from imprison- 
ment in Turkey, constituted the more serious employ- 
ment of the new secretary in his short term of office. 
They were important questions in their day, but are 
now forgotten. 

There was one question, however, which has not 
been entirely forgotten, and that was the Hlilsemann 
Letter in which Webster saw one of his opportunities. 
Our government had had an agent in Europe to report 
the progress of the revolution in Hungary, so that we 
could recognize any new government that established 
itself. The revolution was put down; and the Cheva- 
lier Hlilsemann, the Austrian charge at Washington, 
complained of the investigation of this agent as spying 
and an inclination to sympathize with the revolutionists. 
Webster determined to say in his reply that by the law 
of nations we were entitled to make such an investi- 
gation for our own information and guidance, that we 
did, as a matter of fact, sympathize with the struggle 
for Hungarian independence because it was so like our 
own, that we would have been quite willing to recognize 
an independent Hungarian government, that we had no 
sympathy whatever with the Holy Alliance of which 

502 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

Austria was a member because its principles were a 
denial of the rightfulness of our own origin, that we 
had become a powerful republic of twenty-five millions 
of people, and that if the Austrian government had 
attempted to treat our authorized agent as a spy we 
would have been entirely competent to resent it and 
would have resented it by the whole power of the re- 
public, military and naval. 

It cost him no little labor to say all this with historical 
proof and in the most finished language of refined diplo- 
macy. Draft after draft of the long letter was pre- 
pared with the help of a subordinate in the State De- 
partment, Mr. Hunter, and of Webster's life-long friend 
Mr. Everett, both of whom he called to his assistance, 
as he was far from well that autumn of 1850. Under 
his directions they made the first rough drafts from 
which he worked ; and in the finished document there 
remained some sentences which are supposed to be not 
thoroughly Websterian. But it was a most impressive 
paper which delighted the whole country by its Ameri- 
canism, inspired respect in Europe, and has become a 
landmark in the history of diplomacy. It was a letter 
in which the substance was old-fashioned spread-eagle- 
ism expressed in classic urbanity, and no one but Web- 
ster could have done it. Except that it is not so blunt 
it reminds us in some respects of a letter addressed to 
the British government by President Grover Cleveland 
on the Monroe Doctrine. It was Webster's last service 
to the cause of his life, — American nationality. 

" If you say that my Hiilsemann letter is boastful and 
rough, I shall own the soft impeachment. My excuse is two- 
fold : I. I thought it well enough to speak out, and tell the 
people of Europe who and what we are, and awaken them to 
a just sense of the unparalleled growth of this country. ^ 2. 
I wished to write a paper which should touch the national pride, 
and make a man feel sheepish and look silly who should speak 
of disunion." (Curtis, vol. ii, p. 537-) 

As the time for the Presidential nominations that 
were to be made in June, 1852, drew near, the great 

503 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

political question obviously before the country was 
the position the Whig party should take on the Clay 
compromise. It was regarded by its advocates as suc- 
cessful, as having accomplished its object for over a year, 
and as likely to continue in this beneficent course if left 
undisturbed. The Democrats both North and South, to- 
gether with the southern Whigs and the northern con- 
servative Whigs, were favorable to it and wished to 
see a President elected who would assist in making 
it final and permanent. Against this desire for finality 
were arrayed the radical Whigs, the Abolitionists and 
the Free Soilers, who denounced finality as a base league 
with cruelty, tyranny and crime, and whose utmost 
efforts were directed towards bringing the whole ques- 
tion again into a state of solution from which some 
other policy could be shaped. 

In the Whig party Webster, Fillmore and General 
Scott were the possible candidates. A strong conser- 
vative interest favored Webster, A gathering of Whig 
delegates in Massachusetts adopted an address, drawn 
by Edward Everett, declaring that all other influences 
would have been unavailing to pass the compromise 
without Webster's 7th of March speech, and that his 
subsequent efforts to suppress the agitation against 
compromise had largely contributed to save the Union. 
Such praise, such very liberal praise, of the 7th of 
March speech would be difficult to find anywhere else in 
Massachusetts literature. Similar demonstrations in 
his favor were made in other States ; and in New York 
a meeting of Whigs adopted a strong appeal to the coun- 
try prepared by Mr. William M. Evarts, one of the 
young men to become prominent in the new period on 
which the country was entering. 

" This eminent citizen, instructed in every art, trained in 
every discipline, informed by every experience of public life, 
endowed with every power, and furnished with every acquire- 
ment fit for the service of the State — his public virtue, and 
patriotism, tried by every personal, partisan and sectional 
influence within the whole sphere of our politics, and ever 
found true to the whole country, and its permanent welfare — 

S04 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

this eminent citizen, now in full maturity of years and wisdom, 
yet his eye not dimmed, nor his natural force abated, we believe 
most worthy to receive the honors, most able to perform the 
duties of President of the United States." 

There was more, constituting altogether the most 
complete and best description of Webster's political 
character and career that has ever been briefly stated. 
It was all true enough except, unfortunately, the five 
or six words which said that his natural force was 
not abated. So far as ability and experience were con- 
cerned, no man was better fitted tO' fill tlie office of 
President. No man by long patriotic and devoted pub- 
lic service more richly deserved it. Whether, if nom- 
inated, he could be elected with the radical Whig and 
Free Soil press ridiculing as womanish his and Clay's 
fears for the safety of the Union, and denouncing com- 
promise as an imbecility, was quite another question. 
Many of the radical Whigs were now saying that the 
fear that the Union once broken could never be re- 
stored was a mere humbug and bugaboo. If broken 
into two or three sections by slavery, they would soon 
reunite and be stronger than ever. But even if nomi- 
nated Webster could not have been elected, not merely 
from want of votes, but because his death occurred 
before election day. 

Among the other possible candidates, Air. Fillmore 
was of the same views on compromise as Webster, and 
though a rather colorless man, he had given the country 
a good administration and had a strong following. 
General Scott, " old fuss and feathers." as he was famil- 
iarly called, had an equally strong following, and on 
certain grounds seemed available. He was a military 
hero, the sort of candidate with which the Whigs had 
already twice won the Presidency; and his opinions 
on compromise and other political questions were almost 
unknown and could presumably be made to take various 
shapes. So far as his opinions were known, they were 
against the compromise, and his friends and active sup- 
porters were of that stripe. 

505 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

Forty ballots were taken in the convention with him 
and Fillmore running almost even, and he was finally 
nominated on the fifty-third ballot by a " deal " and on 
a platform which supported the compromise and the 
new fugitive slave law. The southern Whigs in the 
convention had wanted this sort of platform, but many 
northern Whigs had opposed it. An agreement was 
reached by which the southern Whigs gave votes 
enough to nominate Scott, in exchange for which the 
northern Whigs withdrew their opposition to a plat- 
form favoring the compromise. This double deal of a 
candidate with opinions the opposite of those of the 
platform, while on its face an apparent shrewdness to 
some minds, was in its results a most lamentable failure.^ 

Not a southern vote was cast for Webster, so that 
if it be true, as alleged by the Abolitionists, that he had 
made the 7th of March speech and supported compro- 
mise merely to secure southern support for himself, he 
made as great a blunder and miscalculation as was ever 
imade by him or by any other statesman. 

The Democratic candidate, Franklin Pierce, was 
elected by an overwhelming vote ; and the Whig party, 
of such noble memory and usefulness, was never heard 
of again in active politics. 

The spring and summer of 1852, which were all 
tliat was left of life for Webster, were crowded with 
duties which would not have been light tasks for a 
young man in perfect health. Besides his official work 
as Secretary of State, he delivered a long and carefully 
prepared discourse before the New York Historical 
Society on " The Dignity of Historical Compositions," 
which was a review and criticism of all the great his- 
torians of the past. 

This was another of the occasions when he was 

' Curtis, vol. ii, p. 623. Whatever may have been Webster's 
disappointment as to former nominations, he manifested, his 
private secretary says, no regret at the loss of this one in 
1852. (Lanman, Private Life of Webster, p. 63.) 

506 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

reported to have been drunk in the delivery of a speech, 
a charge which Mr. Stetson, who was with him, cir- 
cumstantially refutes.^ There was no foundation for 
the story that Mr. Stetson saw or could remember, 
except that, being tired, he had before the delivery of 
the speech laid his head upon his hand. But with the 
zealous work of the Abolitionists to " kill him," as they 
called it, the slightest circumstance was now enough. 
If he rose from a chair stiffly, as men after sixty are 
apt to do ; if in an after-dinner speech he rested his 
hands on the table, if he laid his hands on a politician's 
shoulders, imniediately it was " Oh, he was drunk; fine 
speech, fine speech, but he was drunk." 

Immediately after his historical society address he 
spent some wxeks in Trenton trying the famous case 
which involved the invention of vulcanized india-rubber 
by Mr. Goodyear. It was unusual for a Secretary of 
State to tr)' cases in court; but the fee in this case, 
$10,000, was so large that Webster eagerly seized upon 
the opportunity to relieve himself of some of the heavy 
burden of his debts. One or two more fees like that 
would, he said, pay off everything. 

He was driven every morning from the hotel to the 
court house by Air. Goodyear's coachman, with a very 
fine blooded horse. Webster admired the animal so 
much that Mr. Goodyear, delighted with the result of 
the case, sent the horse to Marshfield as a present. 

Physically Webster was no longer the same man, 
but by the testimony of one w^ho saw him conduct this 
difficult and important trial his mental abilities were as 
strong as ever. His opponent, Rufus Choate, has left 
us a beautiful description of him. 

"The raven hair, the vigorous full frame and firm tread, 
the eminent but severe beauty of the countenance, not yet 
sealed with the middle age of man ; the exuberant demonstra- 
tion of all sorts of power, which so marked hnn at first— for 
these as once they were I e xplored in vam. Yet how far 

•Wilkinson's Daniel Webster, p. 120. 

507 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

higher was the interest that attended him now : his sixty-nine 
years robed, as it were, with honor and with love, with asso- 
ciations of great service done to the State, and of great fame 
gathered and safe; and then the perfect mastery in its legal 
and scientific principles, and in all its facts; the admirable 
clearness and order in which his propositions were advanced 
successively; the power, the occasional high ethical tone, the 
appropriate eloquence, by which they were made probable and 
persuasive to the judicial reason, these announced the leader 
of the American Bar, with every faculty and every accomplish- 
ment by which he had won that proud title, wholly unim- 
paired." 

Such was the man in his seventy-first year whom 
the Abohtionists said was a common drunkard. He 
afterwards made speeches at Harrisburg and at Annap- 
olis to encourage support of the compromise. That 
in itself of course was proof of drunkenness. He was 
thrown from his carriage while driving near Marshfield 
on the 6th of May. The bolt holding the front wheels 
tO' the body broke, the body dropped down, and he was 
shot forward, striking on his wrists and head. He 
was carried to a house, where he lay insensible for some 
time; and this injury may possibly have hastened his 
final illness. Before he had recovered from this acci- 
dent he made a long speech in Faneuil Hall. He made 
another speech in Boston in July at a great reception 
given to him by all classes of people and intended to 
express regret that he had not been noiTiinated by the 
Whig convention. These speeches were both in his 
usual able manner, although he was still suffering from 
the effects of the accident. His arm was inflamed and 
in a sling, and he required the constant assistance of 
an attendant about his person. But when he went into 
the hall to speak he dispensed by a great effort, his 
physician tells us, with both the attendant and the 
sling. 

That summer of 1852 he tried to spend principally 
at Marshfield, and attend there to his duties as Secre- 
tary of State ; for the hot weather in Washington he 
felt would kill him. Serious business arose with Eng- 
land over our rights of fishing in the waters of New 

508 




Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Coiniiany 



WEBSTER SHORTLY RKFORIC HIS DIOATH 
(From a Daguerrcotypi-) 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

Foundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Webster 
was returning from The Elms in New Hampshire to 
meet the British Minister at Marshfield and had arrived 
at Kingston, nine miles from his place, where, much to 
his surprise, he was met by a vast concourse of his 
neighbors and friends without regard to party lines, 
some in carriages, some on horseback, and with great 
ceremony they conducted him home, the roads being 
lined for miles with women and children. An address 
was made, to which he replied in the last speech he 
ever made to a public assembly. 

" I remember," writes his secretary, " how, after the 
crowd had disappeared, he entered his house fatigued beyond 
measure, and covered with dust, and threw himself into a chair, 
and he then looked up, like one seeking something he could 
not find. It was the portrait of his darling but departed 
daughter Julia, and it happened to be in full view. He gazed 
upon it for some time in a kind of trance, and then wept 
like one whose heart was broken, and these words escaped 
his lips : ' Oh, I am so thankful to be here ! If I could only 
have my will, never, never, would I again leave this home.' 
And then he sought and obtained a night of repose." (Lan- 
man. Private Life, p. 177.) 

President Fillmore wanted him to go as Minister 
to England, and he had to gO' tO' Washington for a few 
weeks in August. There was plenty of work cut out 
for him ; but he was utterly weary and trying to resign 
from the secretaryship and all his duties. While in 
Washington he prepared a long statement on the right 
of our people to take guano from the Lobos Islands. 
Contrary to what might be expected, it is in his accus- 
tomed powerful manner, and shows no signs of intellec- 
tual failing; but it was the last diplomatic paper he 
ever drew. Attempts were being made in Massachu- 
setts and various parts of the country to have him run 
as an independent candidate for the Presidency, and 
urgent letters were coming to him on this subject. 
Equally urgent letters were pouring in upon him to 
support the regular Whig nomination of General Scott. 

He would take no part in the independent movement ; 

509 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

and as for his supporting General Scott, well known to 
be the enemy of the compromise for which Webster 
had labored, sacrificed and risked himself for the last 
two years and which he believed essential to the safety 
of the Union, that was out of the question. The truth 
was that both Webster and the Whig party were dying. 
While not, perhaps, willing to foresee his own end so 
near, he foresaw clearly enough the end of his old 
political party which had so stultified itself and divided 
itself beyond hope with a soldier candidate opposing 
compromise on a platform that favored compromise. 

The result of the election, Webster said, would be 
that the Wliig party would be withdrawn into the 
North ; no party not extending throughout the Union 
could safely administer the government ; there would 
soon be no political party of any importance in the 
South except the Democrats. 

Early in September he was back again at Marshfield, 
never to leave it except for a short visit tO' Boston. It 
was in this month that he first complained to his physi- 
cians of the symptoms of his final illness, cirrhosis of 
the liver.^ He spent the month fighting the hay fever 
and living on milk, lime water and gruel, a strange diet 
for him. The glare of the sun hurt his eyes ; but when- 
ever he could he was out in his boat on the ocean with 



* The result of the post-mortem examination was reported 
by his physicians in the American Journal of Medical Sciences 
for Januar}^ 1853. They appear to have concluded that the 
immediate cause of his death was hemorrhage of the stomach 
and intestines, brought on by cirrhosis of the liver. They 
weighed his brain and found it next below that of Cuvier, 
the French biologist, which was the largest reported up to that 
time. Cuvier's brain weighed 64^ ounces and Webster's 63^ 
ounces. But size in a few individual cases means nothing; 
for Lord Byron, one of the high intellects of that period, had a 
brain and head rather smaller than the average; and one of the 
largest brains that has ever been weighed is said to have 
belonged to a bricklayer. It is only in comparing thousands 
of instances that any conclusion as to a more intelligent race 
having a larger average brain can be drawn. 

510 



LAST DAYS OF WEBSTER AND THE WHIGS 

an awning for protection. As October came he grew 
weaker. But he kept the house well filled with his 
relatives and close friends, giving minute directions for 
their entertainment and planning for them excursions in 
which he sometimes tried to take a part. Before the 
middle of the month it was evident to his physicians 
and friends that he could not last long, yet when unable 
to move without assistance he clung to every detail of 
his old life out of doors. His oxen were driven round 
for him to see from the window ; and he directed every 
day the work of the farm. 

" He forgets not to send to a friend in Boston a fresh 
caught fish, to another a teal shot in the httle lake near his 
house, or a pair of ducks brought down by the unerring aim 
of his faithful boat-keeper ; to a lady friend in Washington 
he sends some magnificent fruit with which his trees are loaded, 
and to another in Boston a noble saddle of mutton from his own 
flock." (Curtis, vol. ii, p. 683.) 

The insatiable desire to buy land was still with him, 
and on the 29th of September, within a month of his 
death, we find him concluding a bargain for fifty more 
acres. A couple of days afterwards he directs his man 
Hatch to keep a light all night on the mast of his sail- 
boat on the pond behind the house, so that during his 
sleepless nights he could see from, his bed the small 
United States flag that was nailed to the mast ; the 
light was to be kept there every night as long as he 
lived. " My light shall burn," he said to Hatch, " and 
my flag shall fly as long as my life lasts." ^° 

His physicians were surprised at his resistance to the 
disease. He was anxious to be conscious of the act of 
dying; he had a curiosity to study that last act as he 
had studied so many things ; and they helped him with 
stimulants and stopped his pain with opiates. But in 
the end, like most people, he sank into an unconscious 
state in which he breathed for a few hours and died 
early in the morning of October 24, 1852. 

" Works, National Edition, vol. xvi, pp. 665, 668. 



THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

The streets of Boston were hung with black and a 
great funeral march of all classes and conditions kept 
passing for hours through the town. The Mayor and 
Alderman wore crape. Many of the courts of New 
England, and as far south as Baltimore and Washington, 
adjourned; flags were half-masted; public business 
stopped. Only one court, says Theodore Parker, did 
not adjourn, the United States Court at Boston that 
was trying an Abolitionist for rescuing a fugitive slave 
from the hunters. 

Immense crowds came to the funeral at Marshfield 
from Massachusetts and all over New England by special 
steamboats and train after train to the nearest station ; 
and there were great numbers of farmers among them. 
His body, dressed in his usual clothes and in an open 
coffin, was laid out under the spreading branches of a 
tree in front of the house, where the crowds passed 
round to view it.^^ 

They buried him in the old colonial graveyard of the 
Pilgrims that was in the midst of his own land, within 
sound of the breakers of the sea, among the old cap- 
tains, fishermen, farmers and godly ministers of that 
ancient race whose descendants he had loved so well. 
It was his own arrangement and request ; and nothing 
could have been more appropriate. They took him to 
the grave, Georg-e Hillard says in his eulogy, not 
enclosed in a coffin, like the lover of earth and nature 
that he was, clad as when alive, with the sunshine he 
loved falling on his face and the breeze blowing over it. 
Out of the crowd of distinguished men stepped six 
plain Marshfield farmers who carried him to his last 
rest ; and on his tomb they placed only two words, 
which were enough, Daniel Webster. 

"Webster Centennial at Dartmouth, pp. 1-3, 208, 275. 
Ben Perley Poore, in his Reminiscences, says the body was in an 
iron coffin with the top ofif. Mr. Runnell, in Webster Cen- 
tennial at Dartmouth, p. 208, says it was "laid upon a raised 
open casket." Poore says the farmers did not carry him to the 
grave, but walked beside a sort of car that bore the iron coffin. 

512 



Index 



Abolitionists, seek to dissolve 

the union, 464. 
Adams and Jefferson, eulogy 

on, 215-217. 
Adams, J. Q., I99, 201-203, 

217, 218, 237. 
Agriculture, English, 379- 

American system, the, 22b. 
Antimasons, 284-286, 356, 357. 
AsHBURTON Treaty, 393-410. 

Bank of United States, 288- 

292, 341-343. ^ ^^ 
Batchellor, a. S., 06. 
Benton, Senator, 237-241, 251, 

277-279, 309- 
Berlin Decree, 105. 
Blake, George, 187, 490. 
Boscawen, 82. 
Boston in Webster's time, 

144, 145- 
Buchanan, James, 199, 202. 
Bunker Hill addresses, 209, 

210, 420. 
Burke, Edmund, 60-63. 

Calhoun, J. C, 198, 309, 3i3. 
314, 317-339, 371-374, 471- 

California, 451. 

Carlyle, 300, 378. 

Chatham, Lord, 60, 64-68. 

Chesapeake, frigate, the, I07- 

Chevy Chase, 44- 

Clay, Henry, 17, 35, 38, 172- 
174, 180, 181, 198-202, 204, 
205, 283, 286, 295, 336-339, 
350, 411, 412, 425, 453, 460- 

463- 
Commerce, American, 103, 109, 

128. 
Compromise of 1833, 336-339- 
of 1850, 460, 480-483, 491- 
33 5 



Corcoran, W. W., 483. 
Creole, brig, the, 394, 408. 
Crimes Act, the, 203, 204. 

Dane, Nathan, 250. 
Dartmouth College, Webster 

enters, 48, 49. 
Dartmouth College Case, 146, 

157- 

Debts, 414, 428-435, 483, 484- 

Demosthenes, Webster com- 
pared with, 60. 

Denison, J. E., 207, 208. 

Dickens, Charles, 376. 

Disunion theories, 123-127, 

330, 332. 
Drunkenness, charges of, 

497-500. 

Duels, 139, 140. 

Eliot, Samuel, 478, 479- 
Elms Farm, the, 28, 300. 
Eloquence, Webster's meth- 
ods of, 52-60. 
Embargo, the, 107, 108, no. 
Emerson, R. W., 420, 421, 

485. , . . 

England, Webster s visit to, 

375-381. 
Erskine, 60, 64. 
Everett, Edward, 80, 497- 
Expurging Resolution, 360, 

361. 

Field sports, 187-190. 
Fillmore, President, 478, 492, 

504-506, 509. , 

Fletcher, Grace, Webster s 

first wife, 85, 194- 
Foot, Senator, 233. 242. 
Force bill, the, 316, 317, 339- 
Free Soil party, 444- 

13 



INDEX 



French Decrees, 105, 106, 

French Revolution, the, 90. 
Fryeburg, Webster teaches 

school at, 74. 
Fugitive Slave law, 476, 452- 

454, 457, 492. 
Funeral Oration, Webster s, 
on a deceased classmate, 54. 

Garrison, W. L., 39, 287. 
Gifts, 428-435, 483, 484- 
Girard Will case, 421. 
Goodrich, Dr., 154, iS5- 
GooDRiDGE, Major, 157, 158. 
Goodyear rubber case, 507. 
Gore, Christopher, 78, 79, I40- 
Greek independence, 169-173. 

Hard cider campaign, 382- 

388. 
Harrison, General, 382-388, 

389- 
Hartford Convention, the, 

125, 126, 129-133. 
Hayne, Senator, 243-280. 
Historical Society of New 

York, the address before, 

506. 
Hoar, Senator, 58, 420, 435. 
Holmes, John, 150, 278. 
Holy Alliance, the, 170. 
HoPKiNSON, Joseph, 150, 217. 
Hulsemann Letter, 502, 503. 

ICHABOD, 486. 

Immorality, charges of, 489- 
Impressment, 408, 409. 
Ingersoll charges, the 426. 

Jackson, General, I95"i99, 
201, 229, 231, 232, 284-291, 
295, 340-345, 347, 350, 355. 
357-360, 372. 

Johnson, Senator, 279. 

Julian, G. W., 469. 

Kenniston trial, 157- 
Kent, Chancellor, 156. 
Kenyon, John, 378. 
King Cotton, 45s. 
Kossuth, 448-450. 



Language, Webster's com- 
mand of, 56-60. 

Lee, Mrs. Buckminster, 84. 

Leopard, frigate, the, 107. 

Library, Webster's, 415. 

Lodge, Senator, on disunion, 
330. 

Log cabin, Webster not born 
in, 24. 

Longfellow, H. W., 485. 

Lowell, J. R., 484. 

Lyman, Theodore, 227, 228. 

McLeod, 390, 395, 396. 
Marshfield, 190, 191, 294-307, 

415-420. 
Mason, Jeremiah, 86, 87, 88, 

149- 
Masons, the. See Antimasons. 

Mexican War, the, 436, 439, 

441. 

Minister to England, Webster 
wishes to be, 374. 

Missouri Compromise, the, 
167, 168. 

Monica, 303. 

Morning, Webster's descrip- 
tion of, 418. 

Mutual Admiration Society, 

the, 73. 

Napoleon, 97-101, 106, 135. 

141, 171. 175- ,,. 
National Republicans, the, 

283, 340. 
New England, 18-21, 128, 133, 

238-242. 
New Mexico, 4S0, 45 1. 
Non-intercourse Act, the, no. 
Nullification, 309-315, 3i7- 

339- 

Oratory, spread-eagle kind, 

54' 55-. ^ ., . 

Orders in Council, 105, loO. 

Oregon boundary, 425- 

Palmerston, Lord. 397- 
Panic of 1837, 366, 367. 
Parker. Theodore, opinion of 
Webster, 15, 428. 



514 



INDEX 



Parton, his opinion of Web- 
ster, i6, 17. 

Patchogue, speech at, 388. 

Peel, Sir Robert, m, 398. 

Pet banks, 343. 

Peterson, Seth, 302, 386, 387, 
419. 

Phi Beta Kappa address, 116- 
119. 

Plumer, William, 67, 121, 168, 
169. 

Plymouth address, 160-163. 

Political economy, Webster's 
opinion of, 179, 180. 

Portsmouth, life at, 82-86, 89. 

Prescott, Judge, 163. 

Presidency, nomination for, 
283, 355. 357, 359, 446-448. 

Press gang, the, 104, 114-117. 

Protest, Jackson's, 350-353- 

Public lands, 233-237. 

Randolph, John, 139, 140. 
Rawle, on the Constitution, 

Religion, Webster's, 422, 423. 
Removal from office, Presi- 
dent's power of, 231, 232. 
Removal of the deposits, 341- 

343, 348, 349- 
Repeal of the Decrees, 11 1, 

112. 
Reply to Hayne, 246-280. 
Rockingham Memorial, the, 

121, 122. 
Rogers, N. P., description of 

Webster, 39. 

Sandwich, 190. 
Saratoga speech, 384-387. 
Scott, General, 504, 510. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 69, 417, 418. 
Seventh of March speech, 468, 

477- 
Seward, Governor, 471, 475, 

476. 
Slavery, 161, 166, 167, 286, 

309-315. 361 436-439, 450, 

452-458, 459. 
Smith, Jeremiah, 149, 150, 151. 
South Carolina protests 

against tariff of 1828, 224, 



Spectator, the, Webster reads, 

43- 
Sprague, Senator, 278. 
Spread-eagle oratory, 54, 55. 
State banks, the, 343-345- 
Story, Judge, 89-93, 154, 159. 

160, 211. 
Sub-treasury, 343, 368-370, 

385, 390- 
Sumner, Charles, 479, 485, 493, 

494- 

Tariff of 1816, 143. 

of 1824, 173, 175-182. 
of 1828, 221-224, 308-315. 
Taylor, President, 441, 443, 

477- 
Texas, 436-439. 475- 
Thomas, Ray, 382. 
Thompson, T. W., 70. 
Ticknor, George, 74, 75, 161, 

192. 193. 
Tyler, President, 391, 411, 4121 

United States Bank, 288- 
292, 341-343, 390, 413. 

Van Buren, Martin, 293, 355. 
Virginia and Kentucky Reso- 
lutions, 268, 269. 

War of 1812, declaration of, 
112, 113. 

Washington Benevolent As- 
sociation, 119. 

Washington Treaty of 1842, 
393-410. 

Watts, Rev. Dr., 45. 

Webster, Daniel, praised and 
criticised, 15, 16; drinking 
habits, 16; compared with 
great orators, 18; part of 
literary revival of New Eng- 
land, 18, 19; ancestry, 21; 
birth, 22; early home, 23, 24; 
move to Merrimac River, 28; 
keep a tavern, 29; refine- 
ment of family, 30; delicate 
health, 30, 31, 32; appear- 
ance of his mother, 30; love 
of play, 32; love of nature, 
34; first schooling, 34; vigor 



515 



INDEX 



of mature life, 36; height 
and weight, ^H \ favorite cos- 
tume, 39, 40; advantages at 
home, 41 ; goes to Phillips 
Academy, 43 ; teaches school 
at Searle Hill, 46; goes to 
college, 47 ; wide reading, 
48; character in college, 51, 
52 ; Fourth of July oration 
in 1800, 53 ; methods of 
studying oratory, 56-60 ; 
position as an orator, 60-69; 
studies law, 70; amusements, 
71, ']2; teaches at Fryeburg, 
74; wide reading, 76; studies 
law in Boston, 78, 79; trip to 
Albany, 80; refuses clerk- 
ship, 80, 81 ; goes to live in 
Portsmouth, 82 ; marriage, 
85 ; relations with Mason, 
86, 87, 88; relations with 
Judge Story, 89-93; first 
political pamphlets, 95 ; ac- 
cepts the Federalist view oi 
Napoleon, 102 ; argument 
against tlie embargo. 108 ; 
opposes War of 1812, 113; 
delivers Phi Beta Kappa ad- 
dress, 116-119; argument 
against the war, 119, 120; 
drafts the Rockingham 
Memorial, 121, 122; goes to 
Congress, 134; arguments 
against the war, 135-137; 
challenges to duels, 139, 140; 
debate on the tariff, 142 ; 
payment of government 
debts, 143 ; moves to Boston, 
144; death of his daughter 
Grace, 144 ; life in Boston, 
145 ; Dartmouth College 
case ; 146-157 ; Kenniston 
trial, 157; constitutional con- 
vention of Massachusetts, 
159; Plymouth address, 160- 
163 ; La Jeinie Eugenie, 163 ; 
trial of Judge Prescott, 163 ; 
second service in Con- 
gress, 164: head of the ju- 
diciary committee. 166; Mis- 
souri Compromise, 167, 168; i 
Greek independence. 169- 
173; tariff of 1824, 173, 175- I 

516 



182 ; Gibbons vs. Ogden, 182- 
185 ; Ogden vs. Saunders, 
185, 186; field sports, 187- 
190; discovery of Marshfield, 
190, 191 ; visit to Jefferson 
and Madison, 191, 192 ; death 
of his son, 193; Crimes Act, 
203 ; associated with positive 
legislation. 204; address at 
Bunker Hill, 209, 210; visits 
Niagara, 211 ; bill to reorgan- 
ize the Supreme Court, 213 ; 
Panama mission. 214; eulogy 
on Adams and Jefferson. 
215-217; elected to the Sen- 
ate, 219; death of his wife, 
220; tariff act of 1828, 221- 
224; libel suit against Ly- 
man, 227, 228; remarriage, 
230; Great Debate — Reply to 
Hayne, 233-280; White mur- 
der trial, 281, 282; urged to 
become candidate for Presi- 
dency. 283 ; Anti-masons, 
284-286 ; United States 
Bank. 288-292; purch'ise of 
Marshfield, 294-307 ; nullifi- 
cation, 309-339 ; compromise 
of 1833, 336; tour of the 
West, 340, 341 ; removal of 
the _ deposits, 341-343; Jack- 
son's protest. 350^354; the 
Presidency, 357 ; wishes to 
retire, 361, 362 ; buying west- 
ern land, 363-366; western 
tour, 366 ; panic of 1837, 367 ; 
sub-treasury. 369; debate with 
Calhoun. 37i~374; goes to 
England. 375-381 ; hard cider 
campaign, 382-388 ; Saratoga 
speech, 384 ; continues in T)'- 
ler's cabinet, 391, 392 ; Ash- 
burton Treaty, 393-410; con- 
tinued refusal to resign from 
Tyler's cabinet, 411, 412; re- 
signs from cabinet, 414; 
debts, 414; habits of life. 
415-420; Girard will case. 
421 ; religion, 422, 423 ; Ore- 
gon boundary. 425 ; Ingersoll 
charges. 426 ; trust fund sub- 
scribed, 427-428 ; Parker 
charges, 428; debts and 



INDEX 



gifts. 427-435 ; visits the 
South, 442; declines to join 
Free Soil party, 444, 445; 
7th of March speech, 468, 
477 ; charges of immorality, 
489 ; works for compromise 
of 1850, 491 ; Secretary of 
State, 495 ; health fails, 496 ; 
drunkenness, charges of, 
497-500 ; Goodyear rubber 
case, 507 ; thrown from car- 
riage, 508 ; last illness and 
death, 511, 512. 



Webster, Ebcnezer. 22-29, 82. 
Webster, Ezekiel. 50,. 51, 74, 

230. 
Webster, Fletcher, 487, 495. 
Wheelock, Rev. Dr., 146. 
Whigs, 283, 340. 
White murder trial, 66, 67. 
Whittier, 470, 485-487. 
Wild-cat banks, 344. 
Wilmot Proviso, 459, 473, 477. 
Wirt, William, 150, 151. 
Wise, Robert, ^:;^. 
Wright, Porter, 302. 



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